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Search ResultsYou Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism
Thomas David, Zagal José P., Robertson Margaret, Bogost Ian, Huber William While game criticism has been largely tied to the world of enthusiast press game reviews, the emergence of the academic field of game studies and the maturing world of game journalism opens new opportunities to consider the future of the game critique. Today, the critical dialog around games can approach its subject from several vectors—social, psychological, historical, aesthetic, philosophical and more. Despite the rich opportunities to discuss games, and the methodologies available to the would-be critic, the vast majority of games criticism remains produced by the review culture-bound world of game journalism. Developments in the academic world of game studies provide an approach into the emerging dialog about games as individual artifacts and their worth therein. Rather than seeing games and genres as fuel for domain and disciple specific ideological and conceptual arguments, individual games are being viewed as discrete cultural artifacts worthy of discussion, dissent, examination and dissection. Likewise, the games press corps and the gaming public express a growing interest in more experimental, intellectual and challenging game writing. Game reviewing has shown a developing maturity in the area of game criticism. Inside these twin vectors falls a conversation about game criticism. What is game criticism? How should the academy claim its place alongside game journalism as a productive voice in game criticism? Who does it serve? How should it be done? What should game criticism be? Keywords: Game criticism, journalism, game review Evaluating Interactive Entertainment using Breakdown: Understanding Embodied Learning in Video Games
Ryan William, Siegel Martin A. This paper describes evaluating interactive entertainment by understanding embodied learning in games, which is a perspective that situates the learning that a player must go through to play a game in a skill-based environment. Our goal was to arrive at a tool for designers to improve learnability from this perspective. To study embodied learning, we use the concept of breakdown, which happens when our experience fails to aid our everyday actions and decision-making. We conducted a study to investigate learning in games from which we constructed a framework of 17 patterns of breakdown and a set of guidelines to aid heuristic evaluation of video games and to help designers support breakdown in interactions, which support players’ learning, so that they do not become breakdowns in illusion, which break players’ immersion. Keywords: video games, user experience, learnability, embodied interaction, flow, immersion, entertainment Newsgames - Procedural Rhetoric Meets Political Cartoons
Treanor Mike, Mateas Micheal Video games have been created about political and social issues since the early days of the medium. In recent years, many developers are rapidly creating and releasing games in response to current events. These games are being referred to as newsgames. With an increasing number of people citing the internet as their primary news source, it would appear that newsgames could become an important part of how people understand current events and could rise to be an important and expressive video game genre. However, the word “newsgame” is currently only quite loosely defined, resulting in the term being applied to many forms of serious, or nonfiction games. Also, despite the quantity of games that relate to current events, very few newsgames can be said live up to the defining claims that newsgames are the video game equivalent of political cartoons [25] – a well developed and established medium for political expression. This paper fleshes out the political cartoon comparison in order to learn from the long history of political cartoons and give direction to the current state of fledgling and unsophisticated newsgames. It also suggests clear and flexible definitive criteria for newsgames as well as a redeclaration of their expressive power. Keywords: Newsgames, persuasive games, procedural rhetoric, game design, simulation The Integration of the Computer-mediated Ludic Experience in Multisensory Environments
Roque Licinio, Castelhano Nuno Multisensory stimulation environments (MSE) have grown in popularity particularly among organizations dedicated to children with developmental disabilities. These artificial places are the stage for a custom-made intervention that relies on technological artifacts to induce a general feeling of relaxation and well-being, from which leisure, occupational or therapeutic objectives are pursued. Children with intellectual disability are a preferential group of clients in MSE for reasons related to the intervention on their personal development, taking into account the imperative of social inclusion and integration. The computer-mediated ludic experience, provided by a computer game or a simulation, concentrates a stimulation potential that is similar to other traditional objects in MSE. In addition, the computer-mediated ludic experience can be designed and configured to work as a mediator to the objectives of the intervention being carried out. The first objective of this work is to clarify which specific areas of the intervention based on the MSE for children with intellectual disability could benefit from the computer-mediated ludic experience. The challenge of contextual diversity is also meaningful for a second concern in this work, related to the elicitation of preferential characteristics of the computer game to be used in MSE, as a contribution to the definition of a set of design guidelines. Keywords: Children with intellectual disability, Ludic experience, Multisensory Stimulation Environments Encoding liveness: Performance and real-time rendering in machinima
Cameron David, Carroll John Machinima is the appropriation of software-generated 3D virtual environments, typically video games, for filmmaking and dramatic productions. The creation and distribution technology of machinima tends to hide the nature of the performer, provoking consideration of a definition of ‘liveness’ that can accommodate the real-time rendering of screen content by game software in response to human input, or – at the extreme – as if there is human input in accordance with performance parameters coded by humans. This paper considers the continuum of creative modes that machinima makers work on, and the differing aesthetic/technical decisions affecting the level of liveness in the finished production. Machinima films derive from captured gameplay, puppet-like live improvisational work, cinematic or televisual on-camera performances, and totally scripted performances produced using coded commands. Often, the real-time rendering capability of the game software is only critical at the point of image capture, but once the footage has been saved as a video file it is editing and post-production that becomes the focus of much machinima production. Even live improvisational pieces – whether performed in a real or virtual venue - are generally better known via their capture and distribution as video clips to a wider post-performance audience. This paper also explores machinima making as a community of practice, that is a specific group with a local culture, operating through shared practices, linked to each other through a shared repertoire of resources. Digital performance communities of practice emerging from video games and machinima production can be seen as having levels of engagement with a range of other communities, most obviously the gameplaying, game modifying, CGI animation and filmmaking communities. Consideration is given to how, from a dramatic viewpoint, the performers within a machinima production are also operating in much the same way as in-role improvisation occurs within the community of practice associated with process drama - a strongly framed environment defined by a ‘digital pre-text’ - the common digital environment that provides the agreed fictional context for the dramatic action to unfold in. Keywords: Machinima, performance, live, real-time, cinema, drama Complexities of Gaming Cultures:Adolescent gamers adapting and transforming learning [Abstracts]
Merkel Liz, Sandford Kathy, Hopper Tim We are well aware that video games are causing educatorsto take a second look at the educational value of games,technology, and the social interactions involved (de Castell& Jenson, 2004; Gee, 2003; Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, &Gee, 2005) but what does that learning look like, how doesthat learning or way of knowing happen, and what do thegamers have to say about their learning? What are theimplications for these gamers and for education systemswhen we begin to value the powerful learning involved invideo gaming cultures? Keywords: Adolescent gamers, learning, complexity theory, self-organizing cultures Girls’ Play: Context, performance & social videogame play [Abstract]
Dixon Shanly, Boudreau Kelly It has been almost a decade since Gareth Schott and Kirsty Horell wrote their article "Girl Gamers and their Relationship with the Gaming Culture" in the ‘Winter 2000’ issue of Convergence. According to the abstract and introduction to the article, their goal was to “…focus upon the experiences and attitudes of females who already view themselves as ‘gamers’” [36]. However, as the article develops, it is evident that the experiences of the respondents were framed in the context of the aptitudes and experiences of male gamers. While the respondents in the article considered themselves to be ‘gamers’ to varying degrees, they viewed their experiences in relation to the gameplay of the male gamers in their lives. Over the last nine years, as video games have become more pervasive in popular culture, the amount of girls who play video games has increased significantly (ESA, 2008). With the expansion of game genres, the appeal of video gameplay has increased along with girls’ aptitudes, leading more girls to self-identify as ‘gamers’. While video game culture is often seen as connected to and dominated by male culture, video games are increasingly becoming part of girl culture as well. Within the vast and growing body of literature that focuses on girls and women who identify as gamers, a large portion of this literature focuses on gendered gameplay, and situates girls’ play experiences and styles within the boundaries of male video game culture. Although this literature is informative, and necessary, it is our goal to give voice to the experiences of the players from within girl culture, which for many, includes video games. One of the most increasingly popular genres among girls are games that are physically interactive (beyond the use of a traditional console controller) and require some element of performance as part of its success, such as Dance Dance Revolution (Konami, 1999), Sing Star (SCEE, 2004), Wii Sports (Nintendo, 2006), and Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). These games are most often played in groups (either by choice or by game design) and often encourage creative gameplay as part of the play performance. Keywords: Before It’s Too Late: Preserving Games across the Industry / Academia divide
Lowood Henry, Armstrong Andrew, Monnens Devin, Vowell Zach, Ruggill Judd, McAllister Ken, Donahue Rachel, Pinchbeck Dan This paper is an edited version of the International Game Developers Association’s Game Preservation Special Interest Group’s recent white paper. The specific threats to preserving digital games are outlined, as is the importance of games as cultural objects. The current strategies for preservation across a range of stakeholders are presented followed by an argument for why preservation matters to industry and what industry can contribute. Finally, the unique potential relationship between academia and industry in this matter is explored, and a call for partnership projects and strategic dialogue is made. Keywords: Games, preservation, industry, developers, IGDA Where have all the games gone? Explorations on the cultural significance of digital games and preservation
Barwick Joanna, Muir Adrienne, Dearnley James It is now 50 years since the development of the first computer game but despite the proliferation of digital games in our society - with an industry which is flourishing and an average of 9 games sold every second of every day in 2007, it seems that these products are not as valued as the products of other cultural industries, such as film and television, and they are being excluded from the preservation of our digital heritage. This paper will focus on research interviews undertaken with people in the academic community. It will highlight that the growing academic interest in digital games is being hindered by a lack of research collections to support historical study. Researchers acknowledge that the study of digital games is a relatively new discipline and that outside academia, there is still little understanding of their cultural significance. However, they recognise the importance of protecting games as part of our digital heritage to ensure that future generations are able to understand the development of a valuable aspect of our social history. In other words, this research has underlined that games are considered a culture worth studying and something in need of preserving. Keywords: Digital games, preservation, cultural heritage, academics Horror Videogames and the Uncanny
Kirkland Ewan This paper explores the uncanny dimensions of avatars and gamespaces in survival horror videogames. The avatar’s combination of animation and lifelessness personifies Freud’s notion of the uncanny. Simultaneously, the cybernetic interaction between player and machine, whereby the digital figure appears to act with autonomy and agency, unsettles the boundaries between dead object and living person. Spaces in survival horror games characterise the uncanny architecture of horror films and literature. Many suggest the unsettling psychological disturbance lurking behind the homely and the familiar. A recurring aspect of survival horror combines the investigation of a protagonist’s origins, a return to the family home, and the exploration of gynecological spaces – blood red corridors, womb-like caverns, bloody chambers – reproducing what is for Freud the primal site of the uncanny. Keywords: avatar, cyborg, gamespace, psychoanalysis, survival horror, uncanny Where Do Game Design Ideas Come From? Invention and Recycling in Games Developed in Sweden
Hagen Ulf The game industry is often accused for not being original and inventive enough, making sequels and transmediations instead of creating new game concepts and genres. Idea creation in game development has not been studied much by scholars. This paper explores the origin of game design ideas, with the purpose of creating a classification of the domains the ideas are drawn from. Design ideas in 25 games, developed by the four main game developers in Sweden, have been collected mainly through interviews with the designers and through artifact analyses of the games. A grounded theory approach was then used to develop categories “bottom-up” from the collected data. This resulted in four main categories and a number of sub categories, describing different domains that game design ideas are drawn from. The analysis of the game design ideas also showed that all games consist of a recycled part and an inventive part, and that the ideas in the recycled part mainly come from domains that are closely related to games. This indicates that games perhaps would be more inventive if design ideas were drawn from more distant domains. Keywords: game concept, idea creation, invention, game design, game development Textual Analysis, Digital Games, Zombies
Carr Diane This paper is a contribution to ongoing debates about the value and limitations of textual analysis in digital games research. It is argued that due to the particular nature of digital games, both structural analysis and textual analysis are relevant to game studies. Unfortunately they tend to be conflated. Neither structural nor textual factors will fully determine meaning, but they are aspects of the cycle through which meaning is produced during play. Meaning in games is emergent, and play is a situated practice. Undertaking the textual analysis of a game does not necessarily involve ignoring these points. Textual analysis, like any methodology, does have limitations. The specifics of these limitations, however, will depend on the particular model of textuality employed. These issues are explored through an analysis of the horror survival game, Resident Evil 4. Keywords: Methodology, Textual Analysis, Structural Analysis, Intertextuality, Interpretation, Horror, Zombies, Disability Towards Data-Driven Drama Management: Issues in Data Collection and Annotation
Drachen Anders, Hitchens Michael, Jhala Arnav, Yannakakis Georgios One of the key questions in the design and development of interactive drama is structuring an experience for participants such that an engaging, coherent narrative is presented while enabling a high degree of perceived meaningful interactivity. This paper proposes a new approach to the design of intelligent drama managers (DMs) where DM strategies are learned from a corpus of data collected from pen-and-paper RPG game sessions with expert human game masters. In particular, this paper focuses on the issues relating to the collection and annotation of relevant data from recorded gameplay sessions. Keywords: Interactive Storytelling, Data-driven Drama Management Emulation as a strategy for the preservation of games: the KEEP project
Pinchbeck Dan, Anderson David, Delve Janet, Ciuffreda Antonio, Otemu Getaneh, Lange Andreas Game preservation is a critical issue for game studies. Access to historic materials forms a vital core to research and this field is no different. However, there are serious challenges to overcome for preservationists in terms of developing a strategic and inclusion programme to retain access to obsolete games. Emulation, as a strategy already applied by major developers and the gaming community, is introduced and the KEEP project, designed to create an open emulation access platform is described. Keywords: Games, preservation, emulation, archiving Glitch Game Testers: African American Men Breaking Open the Console
DiSalvo Betsy James, Guzdail Mark, Mcklin Tom, Meadows Charles, Perry Kenneth, Steward Corey, Bruckman Amy Glitch Game Testers is a research project to develop a sustainable high school job program to train and employ high school students as game testers [1]. Our goal is to leverage the passion that young urban African American men have for video games into agency with technology. The first step is to encourage these young people to see the computation behind digital games and the second step is to offer a contextualized computing curriculum [2]. In this paper, we will present findings from formative work on the play practices of young African American men, introduce the Glitch Game Testers project, and report on preliminary findings from workshops. By looking at the intersection of race and gender in gaming practices, we have developed Glitch to specifically meet the cultural needs for young African American men. Keywords: African American, Quality Assurance, Game Testing , Education, Play Practices Contextually-Ambiguous Pervasive Games: An Exploratory Study
Dansey Neil, Stevens Brett, Eglin Roger In this paper a player-centric view is taken to illustrate game rules in terms of definition and validation. Games with externally-defined but internally-validated rules are given the term contextually-ambiguous games, and it is suggested that a contemporary definition of pervasiveness in games should accommodate contextual ambiguity. Several pervasive games have displayed elements of this ambiguity, but examples of games which feature this as a core gameplay mechanism are rare. Therefore, four such games are implemented in a case study in order to explore the potential of contextually-ambiguous games. Results are tentative, but offer some insight into potentially popular features and target audiences of such games. Keywords: Games; Internally-Validated; Play; Rules; Ambiguity; Pervasive; Interpretation; Definition; Validation The Order of Play: Seeing, Teaching, and Learning Meaning in Video Games
Hung Aaron Chia-Yuan This paper explores the locally-produced meaning-making practices of video game players, taking the position that the contingent properties of situated actions play a significant role in the construction of meaning. The participants of this study are Asian adolescents from China, currently studying in New York City, who play video games after school. There are four participants in the following example: Jason, Andrew, Kevin, and Li. As Li was a novice player to the game, her participation yielded interesting insights on the underlying assumptions that both expert and novice players possessed. In particular, it reveals that the expert players had their own definition of proper play that they needed the novice to understand, and the initial failure to communicate with the novice showed that the experts’ interpretation differed from that of the novice. The study is guided by ethnomethodology, an approach that has been applied to many studies involving human-machine interactions, and has been increasingly important in helping us understand how people make sense of environments that involve different interfaces and equipment.The findings show that, even when their interpretations of the action diverge from the game designers’ intentions, these interpretations continue to make sense within the context of their interaction. The findings also highlight the importance of describing these meaning-making practices as they emerge in situated time, as they demonstrate how players are able to comprehend one another in an inherently ambiguous environment. It demonstrates how players’ actions are shaped by their social relationships and are continually refined and clarified by the ongoing deliberation with other players. These findings can help future educational researchers better understand the process of learning in virtual environments, the role of social interaction during play, and can potentially improve our approach towards designing better games for education. Keywords: meaning-making, order, design, ethnomethodology, learning Design Guidelines for Learning Games: the Living Forest Game Design Case
Pereira Luís Lucas, Roque Licínio Gomes Games have long been known for their potential in learning but, on the other hand, design challenges and issues in their use in real contexts have been recognized as well. In this paper we report on a design case for a learning game, “Living Forest”, targeted at exploring sociotechnical aspects of the relationship between Human settlements and forests. The player is presented with a management exercise where she can promote development while balancing social, economic and ecological aspects in forest space. As part of an ethnographic analysis of our development praxis we synthesized a set of guidelines for the design of serious games, i.e. games with learning purposes, that have requirements of fidelity to the Body-of-Knowledge about the phenomena being modelled and learned. Keywords: Learning games, game design, game-based learning Persuasive design of a mobile energy conservation game with direct feedback and social cues
Bang Magnus, Svahn Mattias, Gustafsson Anton Pervasive gaming has the potential of transforming the home into a persuasive environment in which the user can learn about appliances and their electricity consumption. Power Explorer is a mobile game with a special sensing approach that provides real-time electricity measurements and feedback when the user switches on and off devices in the home. The game was developed based on persuasive principles to provide an engaging means to learn about energy with positive and negative feedback and social feedback from peers on real energy actions in the home. We present the design and rationale of this game and discuss how pervasive games can be viewed from a persuasive and learning point of view. Keywords: Pervasive games, Motivation, Persuasion, Electricity Consumption, Persuasive games, Serious Game, Advergame DATAPLAY: Mapping Game Mechanics to Traditional Data Visualization
Macklin Colleen, Wargaski Julia, Edwards Michael, Li Kan Yang In William Playfair's 1786 book, The Commercial and Political Atlas, he states that information, “imperfectly acquired, is generally as imperfectly retained.” [6] Playfair is commenting on the failure of tables to represent comparative data in way that was useful to the reader. Since Playfair, many different forms of media have arisen beyond ink and paper. Yet printed charts (or their digital representations) remain, by far, the most commonly used tools of data visualization. Their evolution over many centuries has allowed them to achieve a degree of sophistication that time-based and interactive representations have yet to achieve. Is the supremacy of printed (or print-like) data visualization to remain unchallenged? Would it even need to be? The authors contend that new approaches may be possible, and even necessary, but would require tapping into a different way of learning that was not strictly about managing the short term visual and auditory memory of the readers [3]. This learning would involve less the experience of reading and more that of direct experience through play and games. Jesper Juul contends that all games are learning systems [2]. That is, to play a game and become good at it, the player must learn the necessary skills and strategies to overcome their opposition. If the goal of data visualization is educational, it may be possible to use specific types of games as ways of representing specific types of data. It may be possible for a player to learn the system of the game and the system of the information together. The authors have built three game prototypes that illustrate the ways in which different forms of data can be represented in the form of digital games. The first prototype, Kimono Colors, is based on data from a cross-referenced table that describes the types of ingredients used to create traditional Japanese dyes in the production of kimonos. The core mechanic [4] of the game has the player “fishing” for colors using one of several dyes the player has collected. By fishing for these colors, players learn the relationships between materials and the manufacture of dye. The second prototype, Mannahatta: The Game, asks players literally to walk around Manhattan and connect the living and non-living elements of a directed graph representing the ecology of the island 400 years ago. Played over an iPhone, users place themselves in the middle of the dataset they are piecing back together. The third prototype, Trees of Trade, uses data from two directed graphs of relationships, ecological and commercial, in a Brazilian Atlantic rain-forest ecosystem. The game involves the players re-establishing the trophic levels of the forest by navigating through the relationships and inserting the missing species on an idealized map. Through play, the user will better understand the elements of a system that is typically illustrated in a static, two dimensional directed graph illustration. Two questions stem from these prototypes: can data create play and can play enlighten data? To answer the first question affirmatively, we need to find evidence that a system created by data has the ability to produce “choice molecules” [4]. That is, in the form of a game, does the structure of data allow the player to make interesting choices about how to proceed as he or she navigates and elaborates the data? If so, then the data in question can create play, which in turn can drive the development of a full-fledged game. As for the second question, if the first answer holds, then the player is, in the course of a game, playing with the data. If the choices made available to a player are established in such a way that the player “levels up” through the information, then the achievement of the games goals will be coincident with the understanding of the data itself. By actively manipulating and using the data to win the game, the player will need to understand the facts and relationships inherent in the data itself, thus producing the desired educational outcome and a greater sensitivity to the systems that data represents. Keywords: data, visualization, games, game mechanics, ecology, history, education Genre in Genre: The Role of Music in Music Games
Aslinger Ben The first academic researchers of music and dance games focused their primary attentions on ethnographic observations of game play, how the shift from arcade to console play affects game play strategies, defining embodied aesthetics, and analyzing the rise of a competitive play circuit in Dance Dance Revolution fan culture [Chan; Demers, 2006; Smith, 2004; Behrenshausen, 2007]. The Dance Dance Revolution franchise has attracted the attention of both academic researchers and members of the education and medical establishments, who wish to harness the power of exergaming in physical education classes to combat rising levels of childhood obesity. Less attention has been by academic researchers to the economics of the production of these games or the ways that the management of track lists, genres, and artists in music games affects gamers’ opinions of these titles and their evaluation of the relationship between a game’s core mechanics and in-game outcomes. This paper analyzes the ways that game publishers and developers create and license the music for games such as Flow: Urban Dance Uprising, Band Mashups, the Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution franchises, and the forthcoming titles Scratch and DJ Hero. Critics’ and gamers’ complaints about the use of “soundalikes” to replace the master recordings by original artists along with recent attempts from Warner Music to push for increased licensing fees point to ongoing controversies over in-game music and the industrial relationships between the gaming industry, the recording industry, and performance rights organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. This paper also examines how particular genres of music create difficulties for game design, constructing the relationship between on-screen content, the player, and game peripherals, and for players working to make sense of the relationship between their musical and gaming tastes. Examples I discuss include blog reactions to the introduction of country music as downloadable content in Rock Band, the lukewarm reception given THQ’s Band Mashups, fan and critical ruminations over the potential success or failure of the turntable peripheral in Scratch and DJ Hero, and the difficulties of mapping hip hop into the dance game in Flow! Urban Dance Uprising. Reactions to the introduction of country music in Rock Band ran the gamut, with many bloggers and online fans expressing frustration that the visual culture of the game and its embrace of rock culture militated against the inclusion of country music. Likewise, many gamers and critics were bewildered by Band Mashups, a game that simulated a battle of the bands and a battle of musical genres. Even the deceptively simple Dance Dance Revolution franchise illustrates the difficulty of managing the track list for each title. The need for genre diversity and for a range of songs with varying numbers of beats per minute to satisfy inexperienced, intermediate, and advanced players illustrates the need for designers to have at least an elementary knowledge of musicology and/or musical form. Perhaps the most interesting example of a music game’s failure is Flow! Urban Dance Uprising. This game, developed by Artificial Mind and Movement and published by Ubisoft, illustrates the difficulty of mapping hip hop onto a DDR style game. The biggest problem with Flow wasn’t the paucity of A-list artists and a track list that privileged lesser known songs that were hard to groove to, but the ways that game designers made few significant modifications to the core mechanic of the dancing game. In Flow, it is a stretch to think that the diegetic operator acts of the player bear any “realistic” relationship to the “machinic embodiments” of the onscreen avatar’s breakdancing moves [Galloway, 2006]. Players seem willing to suspend disbelief that the scrolling arrows in DDR match up exactly to the movements of the player on the pad and the movements of the onscreen avatar, but the complicated breakdancing moves performed by the avatar in Flow substantively challenge the relationship of action and outcome that Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman [2004] posit as critical to designing meaningful play. Keywords: Games, music, licensing, genre Experiential Narrative in Game Environments
Calleja Gordon This paper explores the contentious notion of experiential narrative and proposes the first step in a narrative framework for game environment. It argues for a shift in emphasis from story-telling, the dominant mode of narrative in literature and cinema, to story generation. To this effect the paper forwards a perspective on experiential narrative that is grounded in the specific qualities of the game. This avoids the over-generalization that tends to accompany discussions of experiential narrative while retaining the cognitive dimension in play. Keywords: Alterbiography, Narrative, Experience, Story Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming
Devers Deirdre, Wilson Stephanie Multi-player online gaming environments are designed with the intent of providing entertaining experiences to players that not only foster re-playability but also to cultivate an ongoing allegiance or loyalty to the game publishers’/developers’ brand or various assets (e.g. Master Chief, Grand Theft Auto etc.). Design elements such as webcams, activity monitoring between players, and online presence cues make possible player practices within online game-based environments that, though surveillance-oriented, become the key ingredients that work to construct entertaining online encounters. Yet when similar features are transposed to other less playcentric spaces (e.g. workplace), whether online or offline, they can be perceived as threatening or unwanted. The surveillance networks created by the online games themselves and associated ‘meeting places’ [9] (e.g. Facebook) as well as surveillance activities in these digital spaces are vehicles for creating and sustaining entertaining experiences. The presence of surveillance-oriented design features and their subsequent and on-going use by individuals, create a more entrenched level of engagement and intimacy through repetitive contact. . The aim of this paper is the analysis of various online games and meeting places that comprise a surveillance network in order to identify the various design features and the player activities they give rise to which can constitute various types of surveillance (e.g. participatory, mutual). Building on the idea of surveillance having an entertainment function, I argue that in terms of the expression of a user experience (UX) in these particular digital spaces, surveillance-oriented mechanisms and practices are fundamental to the creation of enduring entertainment experiences which would not be possible without the reliance on the necessity of exposure in both places and of individuals. Keywords: online gaming, social networking, surveillance, design factors, entertainment Exploring Game Aesthetics
Sommerseth Hanna This paper explores an approach to understanding player experience and immersion through aesthetic theory. It should be noted that the paper limits itself to a consideration of singleplayer, avatarbased games with a narrative element. This paper will argue that the experience of immersion is intrinsically tied in with the body and its spatiotemporal positioning within a fictional or constructed space. Seeing immersion from the point of view of the body makes it possible to see a dichotomous relationship between textbased and audiovisual media. When a reader is immersed in fiction, the 'transportation' from one space to another is purely cognitive the readers body is still and the construction of the fictional world takes place in the readers mind. For a player of games to experience immersion, various technologies exist that act directly upon the player's perceptive systems in order to create an experience. Keywords: aesthetics, body, senses, immersion Beyond Adversarial: The Case for Game AI as Storytelling
Roberts David L., Riedl Mark O., Isbell Charles L. As a field, artificial intelligence (AI) has been applied to games for more than 50 years, beginning with traditional two-player adversarial games like tic-tac-toe and chess and extending to modern strategy games, first-person shooters, and social simulations. AI practitionershave become adept at designing algorithms that enable computers to play games at or beyond human levels in many cases. In this paper, we argue that the traditional goal of AI in games—to win the game—is not the only, nor the most interesting goal. An alternative goal for game AI is to make the human player’s play experience “better.”AI systems in games should reason about how to deliver the best possible experience within the context of the game. The key insight of this paper is that approaching AI reasoning for games as storytelling reasoning makes this goal much more attainable. We present an overview of traditional game AI techniques as well as a few more recentAI storytelling techniques. We also provide afoundation for describing and reasoning about games as stories, citing a number of examples. We conclude by discussingthe implications forfuture directions. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, story telling, narrative, drama management Player Perception of Context Information Utilization in Pervasive Mobile Games
Paavilainen Janne, Korhonen Hannu , Saarenpää Hannamari, Holopainen Jussi Pervasive games combine real world and virtual game elements in game design. A player might need to find WiFi hot spots, move to different locations based on mobile network cell IDs, or to do certain tasks at different times of the day. These are just few examples how the real world elements can be utilized in game design. The possibilities for using this kind of context information seem versatile, but there is very little knowledge about how players perceive these features. In this paper, we describe a user study where we investigated utilization of multiple context information types in a pervasive mobile game. The results indicate that context information creates a new challenge layer to the game as the players also need to consider issues outside the game world. In addition, the players found context utilization interesting, but it should be carefully explained for what purposes context elements are used in the game design. If the players do not understand the connection between the context and the game design, the feature is not attractive. In our study, time of the day was perceived as the most interesting context information in the game because the utilization was straightforward and easily understood by the players. Keywords: Mobile Game, Pervasive Game, Context Information Emotional Attachments for Story Construction in Virtual Game Worlds
Eladhari Mirjam Palosaari In the virtual game world prototype World of Minds that uses the Mind Module, a semi-autonomous agent architec- ture, the notion of sentiments, or emotional attachments be- tween objects, is what constitutes the deep structure in the game world. In this paper a play test is presented where sen- timents are instantiated in three di erent ways; randomly, by choice of the player and through interaction. The test indicates that the sentiments that are instantiated through interaction between entities in the world are those that cre- ate meaning for they players of a quality that would be use- ful for the co-creation of narrative potential in virtual game worlds. Keywords: Story Construction, VirtualWorlds, Experimental Methods, MMORPG, OCC, Emotion Modelling, Expressive AI A Literary Excursion Into the Hidden (Fan) Fictional Worlds of Tetris, Starcraft, and Dreamfall
Rambusch Jana, Susi Tarja, Ekman Stefan, Wilhelmsson Ulf In this paper, we discuss a part of participatory culture that so far has not received much attention in the academic world; it is the writing and reading of game fan fiction. The focus in this paper is on fan fiction, based on three different games that represent three different game genres: Tetris, StarCraft and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. The aim is to advance our understanding of how players experience and understand the game environment, and promote further research interest in fan fiction based on computer games. We do this by discussing narrative elements in the above mentioned computer games, and the fan fiction that is based on them. Keywords: Computer Games, Fan fiction, Narratology, Participatory Culture Playful User Interfaces: Literature Review and Model for Analysis
Kuts Ekaterina great potential to improve user experience, as it can be both an effective instrument for the design and a significant addition to current formal user interfaces. Playfulness increases users’ motivation to use the product, and learn new features and technologies of the device. Thereby it opens additional capabilities for designers and developers to introduce new functionality. On basis of a literature review, this paper provides an overview of user interface characteristics that can affect playfulness. We present a set of user interface components with playful interaction possibilities and define a general methodology for analyzing playfulness in user interfaces. Game industry has a tremendous long-term experience in creating attractive interfaces with the best balance of fun and functionality. This paper shows possibilities how it can be effectively generalized to non-playful applications through playful attributes. Keywords: playfulness, user interfaces, playful user experience Modeling Games with Petri Nets
Araújo Manuel, Roque Licínio This paper describes an alternate approach to the modeling of game systems and game flow with Petri nets. Modeling languages usually used in this area are of limited efficiency when it comes to validating the underlying game systems. We provide a case study to show that Petri Nets can be used with advantages over other modeling languages. Their graphical notation is simple, yet it can be used to model complex game systems. Their mathematically defined structure enables the modeled system to be formally analyzed and its behavior’s simulation offers the possibility of detecting unwanted behaviors, loop-holes or balancing issues while still in the game design stage. Keywords: Game design, Petri Nets, game flow modeling, simulation Conflict management and leadership communication in multiplayer communities
Siitonen Marko Online multiplayer games often promote long-term cooperation between players. The resulting player groups and communities can be harmonious and long-lived, but it is equally possible that they encounter problems in building trust, managing the community effort, or negotiating values and goals. Conflict management, therefore, is important for the functioning and stability of multiplayer communities. This exploratory study looks at leadership communication and conflict management in the context of multiplayer computer games and the groups and communities that operate within them. By looking at players’ and playerleaders’ perceptions of conflicts and conflict management, a conception of the patterns behind conflicts is formed. In addition, issues of conflict management and leadership communication are discussed. Keywords: Conflict management, leadership communication, online multiplayer games Processing Play; Perceptions of Persuasion
Svahn Mattias This is a theoretical position paper exploring a projecting of the paradigm of dual process modeling of perception onto the perception of “play”. In this process, a model is proposed that sheds new light on the understanding of how “play” is understood, perceived and processed by the player. The paper concludes with a discussion on what implications the model can have on play analysis, game design and the understanding of persuasion through play, a.k.a. persuasive gaming, serious gaming, advergaming etc. Keywords: Theory, Persuasive Gaming, Dual Process Modeling, Media Consumption, Play The Words of Warcraft: relational text analysis of quests in an MMORPG
Landwehr Peter, Diesner Jana, Carley Kathleen M. As the growth in popularity of massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds has correspondingly increased research interest in investigating culture in synthetic environments. One representation of culture in games is the narrative provided in MMORPGs’ quest sets. Quests -tasks given to players- provide a window into the traits of artificial cultures created for these environments, and researchers have used specific quests to advance arguments about game cultures. We expand on this work by trying to discern cultural traits expressed in the complete quest set for the MMORPG World of Warcraft, We subdivide this set into three corpora: two for the quests intended for players in one of the two in-game factions, one for those that can be completed by members of either faction. We then performed relational text analysis on these corpora, looking across them for shared textual relationships. We find that while all three corpora employ diverse terms, locations, and organizations, the only relationships present in any of the corpora at least 5% of the time are those emphasizing the relationships between players, enemies, and quest giving computer-controlled characters. Given the simplicity of these relations, we suggest that text is currently not a method used for sophisticated themes in game worlds, and designers should either rethink their use of it or rely on alternate methods if they wish to convey such themes. Keywords: game culture, game narrative, text analysis, network analysis, quests Understanding Play Practices: Contributions to the State of the Art [Panel Papers]
Coppock Patrick J., Compagno Dario, Meneghelli Agata, Catania Alessandro, Ferri Gabriele Semiotics draws inspiration for its qualitative methodologies from many fields of scientific and cultural discourse. It aims to understand cultural production and interpretation practices by way of core theoretical notions such as narrativity, enunciation, encyclopedia, and textual openness. A continual refinement and renewal of these notions is driven by comparative analyses of problematic empirical objects. One such object is computer games which are among the hottest contemporary objects of study in new media semiotics. A central theoretical notion used today to understand computer games is practice, which is seen as standing in opposition to the more traditional notion of text. Panel participants will discuss gameplay practices from various theoretical standpoints, with the common goal of describing these practices in ways that open for dialogue and interaction with theoretical approaches by other disciplines and fields of study. The panel will open by discussing how, in computer games, the reader-text interface has been radically reconfigured, opening up for more effective forms of player agency. Some contemporary play practices will be discussed on the basis of video footage of actual game sessions, highlighting the role of player bodies in gameplay space. The role of keys in RPGs will be foregrounded to show how effects of player action in games may be constrained by game objects. Finally, we shall focus on gameplay practices that go beyond single computer games - in commercial and political Alternate Reality Games. The focus will be on how A-R games create innovative mimetic relationships with real life, engaging players in transworld transmedia practices. Keywords: Play Practices Role-Playing Games: The State of Knowledge [Panel Abstracts]
Drachen Anders, Copier Marinka, Montola Markus, Eladhari Mirjam P., Hitchens Michael, Stenros Jaakko Role-playing games form one of the major genres of games and exist across all hardware platforms as well outside of the technology domain in a huge variety of forms and formats. Role-playing oriented research has focused on culture, storytelling, game processes as well as e.g. user interaction, play experience and character design. Today role-playing games research is an established component of game studies. This panel presents a state of the art of the knowledge of role-playing games research covering a great variety of angles and interests, providing an overview of the current hot topics and future research directions within one of the key genres of games. Keywords: Role-Playing Games, experimentation, culture, storytelling, game masters, emotion modeling Transgressive Gender Play: Profiles and Portraits of Girl Players in a Tween Virtual World
Kafai Yasmin B., Fields Deborah, Giang Michael T. Little is known about how girl players navigate through virtual worlds, negotiate their identity, and challenge cultural norms and practices. We investigated over 500 players in a science-themed tween virtual world called Whyville.net with girls being the majority (68%) of its 1.5 million registered players. Using logfile data collected over a six-month long period, we identified three distinct groups: core gamers (7% of all players), semi-core gamers (34% of players), and peripheral gamers (59% of players). We found that all groups participated in common practices but that core players also participated in non-traditional, transgressive practices. These included private flirting with other players and aggressive scamming of others for personal profit as well as public denials of such activities because they violated gender and social norms. Often hidden, these facets of girls’ play indicate the value of virtual worlds as digital publics that offer youth opportunities to engage in identity exploration and border crossing. Keywords: Gender, participation, virtual worlds, avatar Mechanisms of the Soul – Tackling the Human Condition in Videogames
Rusch Doris C. Focusing on games’ specific affectivei, procedural and metaphoricalii potential, this paper is going to explore three devices for the purposeful design of games that tackle the human condition. Device I “Fictional Alignment” matches game structures to fictional themes in order to expand games’ emotional palette through leveraging the affective strength of game emotions and shaping their meaning through fictional contextualization. Device II, “Procedurality”, discusses the potential and limits of procedural expression to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms inherent to the human condition. Device III, “Experiential Metaphor”, investigates the metaphorical potential of game aesthetics and how it can help to make abstract experiences such as emotional processes and mental states emotionally tangible. Since these devices are based on characteristics that coexist in games, they are not mutually exclusive. However, discussing them separately should facilitate their deliberate use. Keywords: Game design, human condition, experiential gestalt, emotion, procedural expression, metaphors Make Videogames History: Game preservation and The National Videogame Archive
Newman James, Simons Iain This paper introduces and describes the UK-based National Videogame Archive, detailing the process leading to its creation and the core methodologies and aspirations of the project. It places the work of the NVA within the wider contexts of preservation, player culture and academia and describes initial projects undertaken by the NVA to supplement core preservation activities. Keywords: Games, preservation, National Videogame Archive, archiving Defining Operational Logics
Wardrip-Fruin Noah, Mateas Michael Much analysis of games focuses, understandably, on their mechanics and the resulting audience experiences. Similarly, many genres of games are understood at the level of mechanics. But there is also the persistent sense that a deeper level of analysis would be useful, and a number of proposals have been made that attempt to look toward a level that undergirds mechanics. This paper focuses on a particular approach of this sort—operational logics—first proposed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin (2005) and since then discussed by authors such as Michael Mateas (2006) and Ian Bogost (2007). Operational logics connect fundamental abstract operations, which determine the state evolution of a system, with how they are understood at a human level. In this paper we expand on the concept of operational logics, offering a more detailed and rigorous discussion than provided in earlier accounts, setting the stage for more effective future use of logics as an analytical tool. In particular, we clarify that an operational logic defines an authoring (representational) strategy, supported by abstract processes or lower-level logics, for specifying the behaviors a system must exhibit in order to be understood as representing a specified domain to a specified audience. We provide detailed discussion of graphical and resource management logics, as well as explaining problems with certain earlier expansions of the term (e.g., to file handling and interactive fiction’s riddles). Keywords: operational logics, mechanics, code studies, unit operations, software studies Better Game Studies Education the Carcassonne Way
Hullett Kenneth, Kurniawan Sri, Wardrip-Fruin Noah As game design programs become more common, educators are faced with challenges in bringing the formal study of games to students. In particular, educators must find ways to help students transition from viewing games purely as entertainment to a field worthy of critical study. One aspect of this transition is to view games on the level of mechanics rather than purely in terms of aesthetics. The study described in this paper was conducted to test the hypothesis that exposing students in an introductory game studies class to German-style board games would lead to improved understanding of game mechanics. The data gathered shows that the students who were exposed to these types of games did exhibit a greater understanding of game mechanics at the end of the course. Keywords: Game Education, Game Literacy Ethically Notable Videogames: Moral Dilemmas and Gameplay
Zagal José P. In what ways can we use games to make moral demands of players and encouraging them to reflect on ethical issues? In this article we propose an ethically notable game as one that provides opportunities for encouraging ethical reasoning and reflection. Our analysis of the videogames Ultima IV, Manhunt, and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn highlights the central role that moral dilemmas can play towards creating ethically notable games. We discuss the different ways that these are implemented, such as placing players in situations in which their understanding of an ethical system is challenged, or by creating moral tension between the player’s goals and those posed by the narrative and the gameplay of a game. We conclude by noting some of the challenges of creating ethically notable games including ensuring that the ethical framework in a game is both discernable and consistent as well as ensuring that the dilemma is actually a moral one and that the player, rather than the game characters, is the one facing it. Keywords: Ethics, videogames, moral dilemma, ethical reasoning 'Remembering How You Died': Memory, Death and Temporality in Videogames [Extended Abstract]
Mukherjee Souvik Death is an intrinsic part of gameplay. On considering the role of killing, dying and negotiating the 'undead' in videogames, one cannot be faulted for noting in them an obsessive engagement with the act of dying. It is almost a prerequisite that the player's avatar has to 'die' many times in the process of unravelling the plot. Instead of the traditional tying and untying (desis and lusis) of narrative plots, held sacrosanct since Aristotle, videogame narratives are characterised by 'dying and undying'. The sense of an ending, as literary theorist Sir Frank Kermode calls it, is constantly frustrated by its absence in videogames. Western conceptions of ending, whether Hellenic or Judaeo- Christian, are based on telos and a linear temporality. In a culture where death is a grim finality and where resurrection is only possible by the divine, videogames seem to shockingly trivialise death by adding to it the perspective of multiplicity. Videogame theorist, Gonzalo Frasca, observes that from the perspective of real life, this reversibility can be seen as something that trivializes the "sacred" value of life. This paper argues against such a conception and in doing so, it shows how videogames point to a different but equally serious view of death and endings that has so far been largely ignored due to an occidental bias. Keywords: Death, Endings, Time, Avatar, Oriental Philosophy, Deleuze Kingdom Hearts, Territoriality and Flow
Huber William Humberto, Mandiberg Stephen This paper explores the relationship between companies Square-Enix and Disney as played out within the games of the Kingdom Hearts (キングダムハーツ) franchise. We contrast the relationship between these two transnational companies within the franchise's aesthetics and theoretical logics over the course of the various games. We are particularly interested in the games' own thematization and problematization of concepts of globalization, transnationalism and cultural flow. The games narratively and interactively foreground the collapse of membranes that separate worlds, producing legitimate and illegitimate modes of territoriality and intermixture. Keywords: role-playing games, franchises, Japan, globalization, translation, transmediation Through the Looking Glass: Weavings between the Magic Circle and Immersive Processes in Video Games
Ferreira Emmanoel, Falcão Thiago This paper proposes a critical discussion about the magic circle concept, through a debate with prior works on the issue, as those elaborated by Johan Huizinga and Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman, as well as with cognitive psychology studies regarding attention. We shall argue that the magic circle, instead of separating fiction and reality, would work as a cognitive mediation structure with graded “boundaries”, which existence occurs in diverse forms, depending on variables like player immersion and attention. Thus, these boundaries get defined and “solid” as the immersive process is developed and one reality seems to change into another: as the player “gets into the looking glass”. Keywords: Magic Circle, Immersion, Attention, Video Games The Game Frame: Systemizing a Goffmanian Approach to Video Game Theory [Extended Abstract]
Deterding Sebastian This paper offers a review, explication and defense of Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974) as a valid contemporary sociological theory of play, games, and video games. To this end, it provides an introduction the frame analytic conception of play, games and video games. It demonstrates that this account provides an explanatory (rather than merely descriptive) model for the sociality of the game/non-game boundary or ‘magic circle’, as well as phenomena that trouble said boundary, like pervasive games or ARGs. To substantiate the timeliness of a frame analytic approach to games, the paper compares it to and partially takes issue with practice theory, specifically Thomas Malaby‘s recent “new approach to games”. The conclusion summarizes the key characteristics, advantages and limitations of a frame analytic account of video games. Keywords: frame, frame analysis, key, upkeying, magic circle, metacommunication, alternate reality games, pervasive games, playbour, play, games, fiction, practice theory Agency Reconsidered
Wardrip-Fruin Noah, Mateas Michael, Dow Steven, Sali Serdar The concept of “agency” in games and other playable media (also referred to as “intention”) has been discussed as a player experience and a structural property of works. We shift focus, considering agency, instead, as a phenomenon involving both player and game, one that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model. This shifts attention away from questions such as whether agency is “free will” (it is not) and toward questions such as how works evoke the desires agency satisfies, employ computational models in the service of player action and ongoing dramatic probability, use interfaces and mediation to encourage appropriate audience expectation, shift from initial audience expectation to an understanding of the computational model, and can be shaped with recognition of the inherently improvisational nature of agency. We focus particularly on agency in relation to the fictional worlds of games and other playable media. Keywords: computer games, interactive drama, agency, intention, perceived consequence, affordances, Eliza effect, SimCity effect, augmented reality, human-computer interaction, improvisation “I Like the Idea of Killing But Not the Idea of Cruelty”: How New Zealand youth negotiate the pleasures of simulated violence
Schott Gareth ‘For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat … It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not’. The aim of this paper is to account for the experience of a two-year research project, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand. This project sought to interrogate commonly articulated beliefs concerning the contribution of games to the ‘debauched innocence of our young’. Akin to the seemingly incompatible sentiments expressed in the opening quotation, the project broadly acknowledged the complexity of players’ relationship with violence as it is articulated in interactive digital games. To achieve this the project prioritized the experiences and perspectives of young people on the nature and function of what is commonly understood as ‘violent’ content within games. Despite forming the readership of popular culture, young people are commonly denied a voice by the very ‘authorities and opinion makers’ that chastise their practices. This paper highlights how players variously contested the term ‘violence’ for its expansive nature and the appropriateness of the way it is unquestioningly and legitimately employed to express what happens in games. Keywords: ‘violence’, social construction, language games, game players Using an RFID game to phenomenologically test a theoretical systemic model for describing ambient games
Eyles Mark, Eglin Roger Imagine what Brian Eno’s genre defining 1978 album Music for Airports (Eno, 1978) would be if it were a game. The game might produce a mood in an environment; the player able to dip in and out of play, which could be facilitated by not having to carry gaming devices, allowing periods of disengagement from the game. The player’s everyday actions would generate data to move the game forward, causing game events. However, it should also be possible for the player to change their behaviour in order to participate more actively in the game, varying their involvement with the game from intense engagement to forgetting they are even playing. The proposed game would span both real and virtual worlds, with player actions in the real world affecting events in the virtual world. We have named this imagined game genre ‘ambient games’ (M. Eyles & Eglin, 2007a). Ambient games may be considered a type of pervasive game (‘a radically new game form that extends gaming experiences out into the physical world’ (Waern, 2006)) in which the game is embedded in the environment and the player may not need to carry digital equipment around with them and, crucially, can continue to actively play while ignoring the game. This paper proposes a systemic domain (Eglin, Eyles, & Dansey, 2007) theoretical model for understanding the underlying properties of ambient games, comparing and contrasting them with computer and video games. The theoretical models of both computer and video games and ambient games are used to generate player activity gameflow diagrams, in which the progress a player makes through the domains in the systemic models while playing a game are clearly shown. A game design research methodology (M. Eyles, Eglin, R., 2008) is used to investigate the ambient game systemic domain model and player activity gameflows. Ambient games, using RFID technology and pedometers, allow players to experience a game in which they are able to vary their involvement while engaged in other everyday activities. In order to discover the lived experience of players of ambient games existential phenomenological methods and in particular template analysis (King, 2008) are used. Studies and observations are described in which ambient games are used within the overarching game design research methodological framework. Keywords: System, console, video games, games, pervasive, ambient, ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing, playfulness, phenomenology Researching player experiences through the use of different qualitative methods
Ribbens Wannes, Poels Yorick Since gameplay is only realized when the player and game interact, studying player experiences is complicated. Most research designs often emphasise either the structure of the game or the player in isolation of the game itself. In this study an attempt was made to test three different qualitative methods to study playing styles and by extension player experiences, while trying to take into account both the player and the game. An analysis scheme was developed to serve as a framework within the three methods and to direct respondents’ attention to the interaction with the game. 42 university students (casual and hardcore gamers) participated in the study during three months after which they wrote a paper on their playing style. During the first three weeks respondents had to fill in a diary every time they had played the videogame. Four weeks later, respondents participated in the video commentary model (VCM). In a game experience lab, a researcher observed the respondent playing the game he had played during the diary study. Afterwards, the researcher interviewed the player on different aspects of his playing style, with the aid of the gameplay session video. Finally, respondents that played the same game participated in a focus group interview (FGI), discussing the topics that stemmed from the diary and the video commentary model. Based on theoretical arguments and participants’ evaluation of the methods, we contend that all three methods are suitable to study player experiences. However, methodological triangulation provides the researcher with more accurate data, allowing to study gamers both in context (diary), through gameplay activities (VCM) and by interaction with other players (FGI). Keywords: Video games, player experience, playing style, video commentary model, diary method, focus group interview An affordance based model for gameplay
Pinchbeck Dan This paper presents a formal model for gameplay based upon the affordances available to the player that are linked to game objects. It has been constructed via an extensive analysis of major first-person games 1998-2008, although it is argued it may extend to all diegetic games. Gameplay can be understood as a network of allowed actions, that can be summarised as a small number of archetypal affordances mediated by a set of parameters that define their functional relationships. As well as the capacity for the model to elucidate the ludic structures of games, it is argued that an affordance based model also provides a means to understand the relationship and role of story and content within a ludological context. Keywords: Affordances, gameplay models, content, ludology, theory The new gatekeepers: The occupational ideology of game journalism
Nieborg David B., Sihvonen Tanja This paper will contextualize the occupational ideology of game journalism by providing a brief introduction to the political economy of game publications. The role of various industry actors (e.g. game publishers, PR agents and brand managers) will be positioned against those of the peripheral industry (e.g. critics, journalists, and editors). Because the game industry is the principal advertiser for many game publications, and because of its tight grip on the most valuable source material, i.e. (early) access to games and restricted insider information, the job of a game journalist consists in many ways of balancing acts between a perceived loyalty to the reading public and a dependency on industry material. Keywords: Game journalism, game capital, political economy, game industry Boys’ Play in the Fourth Space: Freedom of Movements in a Tween Virtual World
Searle Kristin A., Kafai Yasmin B. Over a decade ago, Henry Jenkins wrote “‘Complete freedom of movement’: Video Games as gendered play spaces” in which he argued that video games provide a contemporary alternative to the out of doors freedom of movement boys historically accessed. Video games operate like a ‘fourth space’ (a term coined by Van Vliet), a muchneeded alternative to the adult-supervised and structured spaces of home, schools and playgrounds. These findings echoed the work of many developmental psychologists and others who have long understood that children’s access to play in particular spaces is gendered. We draw on Jenkins’ understanding of “freedom of movement” and developmental psychologists’ research into gender play and gendered play spaces to examine boys’ play within Whyville.net, a virtual world that had 1.5 million registered users between the ages of 8 and 16 at the time of our study. While we have a lot of quantitative information about boys’ play in video games and virtual worlds, we know little qualitatively about how they play. This stands in contrast to our nuanced understandings of why girls and women do or do not play, and how they play. Our goal was to extend Jenkins’ notion of “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, which differ from console games in that players are responsible for constructing much of the content and they often lack a finite goal and story. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyzed logfile data of 595 players involved in online gaming over a sixmonth period. Twenty-one players also participated in an afterschool gaming club with online and offline spaces. We looked at activity frequencies across 13 categories and analyzed logfile data qualitatively, supplementing our understandings with data from field notes, interviews, and video. Three case studies of boy players were developed, with each player representing a different level of expertise and participation (core, semi-core, peripheral). In extending “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, we address boys’ navigation of virtual spaces as a process with geographical, personal and social dimensions. We also view these play spaces as gendered along three dimensions; mobility within the space, access to the space, and control over the space. An overview of the boys’ day-to-day activities in Whyville and discussion of their establishment of “home bases,” or spaces which they used as platforms for further exploration in Whyville, shows commonalities across boys’ play. These overviews are supplemented with in-depth analyses of boys’ activities in Whyville, which show nuanced differences connected to their varying levels of expertise. The fact that boy players have “home bases” where they settle for greater or lesser periods of time is compelling and contrasts with the perpetual motion of boys playing console video games. It also contrasts with previous studies of gendered play, which emphasized girls playing closer to home while boys ventured further afield. Along the social dimensions of boys play we found echoes of Jenkins’ characteristics of boys’ historical outdoors play and monster chasing in console video games. Finally, we found it difficult to compare the personal dimension because the possibilities offered to boys for gender play through avatar design activities are more expansive than their ability to choose from a set number of stock characters in console video games. The increased importance of body image in relation to masculinity was also evident in the boys’ attention to avatar design. We conclude that virtual worlds allow for freedom of movement, but in slightly different ways than console video games. Without a finite goal to their play, boys are able to place an increased emphasis on historical dimensions of boys play and create their adventures through interaction with one another and the space of the virtual world simultaneously, rather than through following a prescribed adventure. Keywords: Virtual worlds, freedom of movement, masculinity “I’m overburdened!” An Empirical Study of the Player, the Avatar, and the Gameworld
Jørgensen Kristine This paper presents the first results of an empirical study of how players interpret the role of the player and the relationship between the player and playable figures in gameworlds. In the following, we will see examples of four genres that situate the player in different positions with respect to the gameworld. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars illustrates a game where the player does not have a playable figure in the gameworld, while Crysis exemplifies a game where player and playable figure viewpoints merge into one entity. Diablo 2 represents a game with a developing figure, and The Sims 2 demonstrates a hybrid combination of named, developing figures controlled by the player from a god perspective. The study shows that players tend to accept all features that aid them in understanding how to play the game, and that it does not matter whether features have a stylistic or naturalistic relationship to the gameworld. Regarding the relationship between player and playable figure, the respondents do not see the dual position of the player situated in the physical world while having the power to act within the gameworld as a paradox, but a necessary way of communication in games. Keywords: gameworld, game system, player, avatar, empirical studies The Rise and Fall of CTS: Kenneth Burke Identifying with the World of Warcraft
Paul Christopher A., Philpott Jeffrey S. Guilds in online games often have a tumultuous life. In this essay we examine the rise and fall of the Cardboard Tube Samurai, a World of Warcraft guild, and explain three key phases in the guild’s existence using the ideas of Kenneth Burke. We argue that rhetorical theory can offer substantive insights into the events of online games, in this case focusing on the roles of identification, division, and consubstantiality in explaining how a guild can build for two years to their greatest triumph and fall apart two weeks later. Keywords: Guilds, raiding, WoW, rhetoric, identification, Burke A Study on New Gameplay Based on Brain-Computer Interface
Ko Minjin, Bae Kyoungwoo, Oh Gyuhwan, Ryu Taiyoung Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a way to control computers by using human brain waves. As the technology has improved, BCI devices have become smaller and cheaper, making it possible for more individuals to buy them. This allows BCI to be applied to new fields outside of pure research, including entertainment. We examine whether BCI devices can be used as a new gaming device, approaching it from a game design perspective. We propose game play elements that can effectively utilize BCI devices and present a game prototype that demonstrates several of these game play elements. Next, we use statistical data analysis to show that using a BCI device as well as keyboard and mouse interfaces makes the game’s control clearer and more efficient than using the traditional input devices. The results offer guidelines for effective game design methodology for making BCI based games. Keywords: BCI, Game Design, Intuitive, Gameplay Play’s the Thing: A Framework to Study Videogames as Performance
Fernández-Vara Clara Performance studies deals with human action in context, as well as the process of making meaning between the performers and the audience. This paper presents a framework to study videogames as a performative medium, applying terms from performance studies to videogames both as software and as games. This performance framework for videogames allows us to understand how videogames relate to other performance activities, as well as understand how they are a structured experience that can be designed. Theatrical performance is the basis of the framework, because it is the activity that has the most in common with games. Rather than explaining games in terms of ‘interactive drama,’ the parallels with theatre help us understand the role of players both as performers and as audience, as well as how the game design shapes the experience. The theatrical model also accounts for how videogames can have a spectatorship, and how the audience may have an effect on gameplay. Keywords: performance, rules, framework, software, theatre, experience Meaningful Movement: The Labyrinth and 'Castlevania: Symphony of the Night' [Extended Abstract]
Martin Paul This paper presents the castle in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as a structure that sets out a pattern of movement for the player-character that is similar to that experienced by the treader of a classical labyrinth. Specifically, this pattern is one of turning back on oneself and it always derives its meaning from the context in which it is performed. For example, the meaning of Theseus stalking the Cretan labyrinth in search of the Minotaur is different from the meaning of the Troia performed at the funeral games of Anchises in the Aeneid or of the dance of a medieval English turf maze treader. This is in spite of the fact that the actual pattern of movement is largely the same in all three cases. I argue here that the transfer of this pattern of movement to Symphony of the Night transforms its meaning once again. Couched in a conventional horror narrative that leans heavily on pop-Freudian motifs, the movement of the main character, the half-vampire Alucard, emerges as a text that writes his ambivalence in spatial terms. The architecture of game space, then, is understood as notes for a performance which derives its meaning in relation to some pre-scripted elements. Keywords: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Labyrinth, Movement Using microgenetic methods to investigate problem solving in video games
Anderson Alice, Brunner Cornelia, Culp Katie McMillan, Diamond James, Lewis Ashley, Martin Wendy As formative research for the development of a suite of middle school life science video games, we are adapting microgenetic research methods [15] that use repeated, small-scale task-based sessions with participants to document how reasoning and understanding can develop and change in short periods of time. In this study, we are working with students between the ages of 9 and 12, examining the development of their strategic thinking as they play commercial games that focus on problem solving tasks (World of Goo, Auditorium, Crayon Physics, Portal). The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the methods we are using and to discuss how they may help to illuminate how game mechanics, narrative context and instructional design can be utilized to create developmentally appropriate games. Keywords: Video games, students, strategy, problem solving, microgenetic Playing your network: gaming in social network sites
Rossi Luca Recently the use of social network sites have emerged as one of the most important and time-consuming online activities. In the large and diversified social network scenario Facebook emerged as one of the most important sites at least in the United States and in Europe. In the Facebook-based gaming scene Playfish, a UK based company, has recently gained a leading position with more than 50 million registered players. The paper will analyze these five games, observing, starting from Playfish’s games, how Facebook games use the social network site and the social relationships between players as a core element for the game experience. In SNS several different contexts of life seems to exist one near the others and eventually overlapping. Closest friends with co-workers, relatives with ex-schoolmates: the paper will present how the new SNS environment can be used for gaming and how gaming activities change when they enter the collapsed context of SNSs. Keywords: SOCIAL NATWORKS, SOCIAL GAMES, SOCIAL CAPITALS, ONLINE GAMING Peer Puppeteers: Alternate Reality Gaming in Primary School Settings
Colvert Angela Whilst there has been considerable research into the potential uses of digital games in the classroom, there has been less investigation into the educational value of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). Unlike console or computer games, in ARGs the game-world is constructed through a combination of on- and off-screen media, and is created and shaped through dynamic dialogue between the designers and players. To create and play an ARG, children are not required to develop programming skills or negotiate gaming software. Instead the players and designers of ARGs create the game elements through the creative and inventive use of ubiquitous communication technologies and artifacts. In this paper I will be reporting on a crosscurricular multi-media literacy project undertaken in a large South London Primary School over two years, which represents one element of my ongoing research into the potential of Alternate Reality Gaming in Primary Education. In this, the children collaborated with the teacher to design and play an ARG with and for their peers. This research demonstrates that ARGs represent an innovative means for children to explore and develop their understanding and experiences of learning and literacy practices across media. In this project, the students made good use of their existing knowledge of games and the affordances of various media and narrative conventions. Through the active production of ARGs, they explored the relationships between these forms, in new ways. Keywords: game-design, alternate reality games (ARG), primary school education Effects of Sensory Immersion on Behavioural Indicators of Player Experience: Movement Synchrony and Controller Pressure
Hoogen Wouter M. van den, IJsselsteijn Wijnand A., Kort Yvonne A.W. de In this paper we investigate the relation between immersion in a game and the player’s intensity of physical behaviours, in order to explore whether these behaviours can be reliably used as indicators of player experience. Immersion in the game was manipulated by means of screen size (20" vs 42" screen), and sound pressure level (60dBA vs 80 dBA), according to a 2 x 2 design. The effects of these manipulations on self-reported experience (including arousal and presence) and behavioural intensity (controller tilt and button pressure) were measured. Results showed that sound pressure level in particular strongly influenced both the self-reported measures of people's affective reactions and feelings of presence and the force people applied to the interface device. Results from controller tilt demonstrated that participants did move along with the dynamics of the game. The measure was, however not sensitive to either of the two manipulations of sensory immersion. In the paper the implications for the use of behavioural indicators of player experience in general and the feeling of presence are discussed. Keywords: player experience, movement synchrony, interface pressure, behavioural tracking, presence “How many headshots you’ve done”: Achievement as discursive practice in videogame play
Molesworth Mike In this paper I argue that achievement is a significant discourse in practice in videogame use. Drawing from Bauman’s (2001) discussion of an individualised society were progress is episodic and autonomous, and from phenomenological interviews with adult players I discuss how players use videogames to perform progress. The use of games as compensation for an otherwise unsatisfactory life reproduces new forms of progress, but these remain dependent on endless consumption of new technologies. This presents videogames as having a pacifying role that allows players to go on (buying) in the face of persistent failures to experience the progress ‘promised’ by consumer culture. Keywords: Videogames, progress, consumption, achievement Press Enter or Escape to Play - Deconstructing Escapism in Multiplayer Gaming
Warmelink Harald, Harteveld Casper, Mayer Igor The term escapism tends to be used in game research without providing any extensive definition of what it means or acknowledging its composite nature. In this paper, the authors question the possible conceptualizations of escapism and the extent to which gamers identify with them. Beginning with a theoretical deconstruction of escapism, the authors developed a framework that they applied in an empirical study with three focus groups. Respondents in these groups completed a survey and participated in a group discussion. The resulting data allowed the identification of eight different discourses of escapism in the context of playing multiplayer computer games. In addition, the study showed that citing escapism as a reason for playing games elicits debate and emotional responses. Given the existence of multiple interpretations and connotations, this paper concludes that escapism is problematic for use in surveys, interviews, and other research techniques. Keywords: Critique, deconstruction, escapism, multiplayer, player motivation Evolution and Digital Game Studies
Easterly Douglas, Carnegie Dale, Harper David While a great variety of fields are addressed in the discussions concerning digital game studies, the natural sciences are rarely among them. We do see references to evolution and biology when we look at new directions in the technical structuring of games, as genetic programming bestows artificial characters with a greater impression of intelligence; but this domain is not discussed in the critical dissemination of player behaviour. If evolution and biology are valuable references for generating artificial intelligences within a digital game, perhaps it is time we consider the significance of such forces for the players engaging the game. As sociobiology pioneer Robert Trivers reminds us: “Natural selection has built us, and it is natural selection we must understand if we are to comprehend our own identities.” Why are the cognitive tools we have inherited for thriving in the Pleistocene era so good at engaging, and being drawn to achieving goals in the fictional pixilated world of digital games? This paper will argue that evolution can play an important role in digital game studies by offering a functionalist explanation to topics such as behaviour, gender, learning, development, and prediction under uncertainty. In building this case, we will examine the history of play research and discuss its dual-lineage: one largely informed by evolutionary biology, and another that is more concerned with play as a cultural artifact. From there, we will consider the potential for Evolutionary Psychology (EP) as a valuable interlocutor for digital game studies. In particular, this field’s approach to addressing judgement under uncertainty lends astonishing insight into how core features of digital gameplay may indeed be triggering innate behaviour. In conclusion, we will present our own experiments being conducted at Victoria University of Wellington, which will provide an example of how Evolutionary Psychology may inform research conducted in digital game studies. Keywords: digital gaming, play, psychology, evolution On the Edge of Reality: Reality Fiction in ‘Sanningen om Marika’
Waern Annika, Denward Marie The Alternate Reality Game genre inspires a mode of play in which the participants choose to act as if the game world was real. Jane McGonigal has argued that one of the most attractive features of an ARG is the ‘Pinnochio’ effect: at the same time that the players deeply long to believe in them, it is in reality impossible to believe in them for real. In this article, we study “Sanningen om Marika”, a game production where fact and fiction was blurred in a way that made some participants believe that the production was reality rather than fiction, whereas other participants found the production deeply engaging. We discuss the different participant interpretations of the production and how it affected the players´ mode of engagement. We also outline some of the design choices that caused the effect. Keywords: Alternate Reality Game, Role-Play, Study, Reality Fiction, Pervasive Game Some Notes on the Nature of Game Design
Kuittinen Jussi, Holopainen Jussi The focus of this paper is to have a critical look at the current game design literature through the analytical lenses of the current state of the art in design research. The aim is not to create yet another prescriptive framework for game design but rather an attempt to connect the game design studies to general design studies in a stimulating way. We first discuss what has been said about design in general, including industrial and graphic design, engineering, architecture, and even software design. We will then continue discussing game design specifically compared to the design in general and point out similarities and especially differences. This leads us to a somewhat obvious claim that doing game design is an activity similar to any other design field but that the form and the content are specific to the game design context. Even though this claim might sound obvious it has some unexpected consequences: firstly, it grounds game design in the large body of existing design research and, secondly, it helps in identifying the crucial activities, forms, contents, and contexts that determine the nature of game design. We look at six game design books alongside two distinct but mutually supporting models of design in general. Our focus is in understanding game design as a situated activity and to see how this notion is discussed in the game design literature. Keywords: Game design research, design research, design situation, game design literature Fake Rules, Real Fiction: Professional Wrestling and Videogames
Oliva Costantino, Calleja Gordon Emerging from a legitimate contest regulated by a set of rules, professional wrestling is today a fictional product, where no actual competition takes place. Those same rules serve as a setting for a particular kind of narration: the kayfabe, the fictional framework for all professional wrestling’s narrative, a fictional world with the characteristic of having a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. Professional wrestling and videogames deal in different contexts with the same elements: rules and fiction (Juul 2005) [13]. By combining aspects of narrative theory and game studies research, this paper will analyze the narrative of professional wrestling utilizing the tools commonly used or specifically developed for videogames. An understanding of professional wrestling elements is necessary to explain and criticize the different approaches that videogame designer have used when creating wrestling videogames, a popular sub-genre that present specific peculiarities. The first chapter will provide a background to the history and the evolution of professional wrestling tracing the transformation from wrestling as a legitimate contest to a constructed media spectacle. The on-going constructed nature of contemporary wrestling will be addressed using Chatman’s concept of narrative. We will then use the theory of scripted narrative and alterbiography (Calleja 2009) [4] to explain how the pre-designed elements in a staged match are only partially scripted. This will be the ground for three subsequent passages, each one enlarging the view on the object of study: what happens in the ring, what happens just outside of the ring, and what happens in the fictional world of professional wrestling. By considering the transmediality (Jenkins 2003, 2004) [11, 12] of professional wrestling, we will analyze those conclusions and see how they are used by professional wrestling videogames: the territory where real rules have to be fleshed out in order to simulate the “fake rules” of professional wrestling. The paper concludes that theoretical frameworks developed within game studies have produced useful tools that can be deployed in different contexts, in this case to understand the constructed story that so deeply informs the agonistic (Caillois, 1962) [5] aspects of professional wrestling. The concept of scripted narrative and alterbiography clarifies how the narrative is enacted in and outside of the ring, integrating previous studies about wrestler fan behaviour (Ford 2007) [8], and claryfing the role of the wrestler as both a storyteller and an actor. By considering wrestling as a serialized fictional product, it is possible to analyze the kayfabe as a unique narrative frame, capable of keeping narrative coherence operating with a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. The concept of transmediality, also discussed in game studies, proves to be deeply affected by the kayfabe. Wrestling has strong transmedial narrative elements: it is sufficient to feature few elements of the wrestling enviroment to project the contents of the kayfabe. With that said, making a game out of the mixture of dramatization, physical performance, and symbolical meaning of professional wrestling is no easy task. A theoretical framework can be useful to approach design issues: wrestling fictional elements appears in videogames thanks to its deep rooted transmediality, but the subtleties of professional wrestling’s narrative are still understated in wrestling videogames. Keywords: Game theory, professional wrestling, professional wrestling videogames, WWE Abusing the Player, and Making Them Like it Too! [Abstract]
Wilson Douglas, Sicart Miguel In this paper we suggest an alternative perspective: game design as abusing the player. Inspired by a number of independent and experimental games, we propose the notion of abusing the player as a creative, aesthetic position taken by the game designer. Abusing players means forcing them into adopting the arbitrary or intentionally antagonistic elements of a game. The metaphor of abuse implies that players are pushed outside of their comfort zone and into the realm of an abusive power relation in which they are punished by the game and its designer. Keywords: Playability and Player Experience Research [Panel Abstracts]
Nacke Lennart E., Drachen Anders, Kuikkaniemi Kai, Niesenhaus Joerg, Korhonen Hannu J., Hoogen Wouter M. van den, Poels Karolien, IJsselsteijn Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn, Kort Yvonne A. W. de As the game industry matures and games become more and more complex, there is an increasing need to develop scientific methodologies for analyzing and measuring player experience, in order to develop a better understanding of the relationship and interactions between players and games. This panel gathers distinguished European playability and user experience experts to discuss current findings and methodological advancements within player experience and playability research. Keywords: Playability, game experience, user experience, techniques, methodology, experimentation, usability Understanding 21st Century’s Mobile Device-Based Games within Boundaries
Ihamäki Pirita, Tuomi Pauliina There are many new forms of entertainment in game industry. Often some of the forms are neglected in academic focus and research. Usually this is the case with marginal game forms. This paper will introduce two different, mobile device based game forms from the 21st century that are very successful among the users but are left out from the centre of game research. Qualitative studies of geocaching and SMS-to-TV human-hosted interactive TV games were conducted by analyzing the field of geocaching (by interviewing players and analysing geocachers’ web-pages and forums on the Internet) and iTV-entertainment (by recording sample of interactive TV-formats). These game phenomena were analyzed and discussed to answer the following questions: What kind of game culture these games represent? What new viewpoints they offer to the field of game studies? What are the reasons behind their success? What different dimensions can be found? Finally, why is it important to study marginal games and what can be learned from them? Keywords: iTV, mobile games, geocaching, cross media, mixed-reality games Age Differences in Associations with Digital Gaming
Nap Henk Herman, IJsselsteijn Wijnand A., Kort Yvonne A.W. de Seniors are an underrepresented group as digital gamers, but also as a focus of study in digital gaming research. We know relatively little about senior gamers, in particular about their needs and motivations to engage in digital gaming. The current explorative study used a free association technique to gather seniors’ perceptions, experiences, and domain knowledge about digital gaming. For reasons of comparison, young adults were also included in the study to allow us to identify associations that are unique to the senior population. From the study new and interesting insights were gathered about seniors’ digital gaming knowledge, which appears to be more limited and less up-to-date than the knowledge of young adults. In addition, seniors seem to hold serious concerns about the negative effects of the digital gaming activity on gamers. These factors could create a barrier for seniors to engage in digital gaming. The findings presented in this paper provide potential directions for game design and marketing to overcome seniors’ obstacles to gaming. Keywords: seniors, elderly, digital gaming, associations, knowledge Digital Art in the Age of Social Media: A Case Study of the politics of personalization via cute culture.
Hjorth Larissa Undoubtedly, as social media ubiquity spreads, the attendant forms of emerging creativity, collaboration and community further appropriate and adapt Digital Art current trends. As Jean Burgess observes in her studies on YouTube, one of the key attributes of this personalization phenomenon is what she calls “vernacular creativity” [9]. Here Burgess spearheads the amateur / professional nexus that has been transformed through networked social media. In these transformations, the role Digital Art vernaculars play in the divergent world of the global games industry in an age of social, networked media has been given little focus. One such vernacular can be seen in cute culture. As a highly emotional and affective vernacular with its roots in Japanese personalization culture, cute culture has straddled various Digital Art terrains such as gaming and new media. I argue that through charting the cartographies of personalization through cute character culture we can gain insight into Digital Art vernaculars both inside and outside Game Studies. By honing in upon one of the most pervasive modes of Digital Art—cute character culture—this paper provides new ways to conceptualize Digital Art. To focus upon cute culture is to explore an aesthetic that has its genealogy in Japanese technocultures — a realm that has, until recently, been left under-researched in the Englishspeaking world. In a period marked by the increasingly proclivity towards “personalized technologies” it is cute culture, with its history in the rise of Japanese personal technologies from the 1970s, that can lend much insight into the politics and practices of contemporary Digital Art. In this paper I uncover some of the meanings that have caused cute culture to become a lynchpin between so much media converging Digital Art with games in an age in which the personal—epitomized by personal technologies—has a deeply political edge. Keywords: Cute culture, kawaii, Japan, Web 2.0, technocultures, social networked media, gender, customization, personalization, produsers, vernacular creativity, localization, avatars, New Media Gameplay Design Patterns for Game Dialogues
Brusk Jenny, Björk Staffan Dialogues are natural models for human communication and have also been used to model interaction within computer games. In this paper, we look at current models of dialogues from within the field of computational linguistics and explore their usefulness of games, and especially for the design of gameplay through interaction with nonplaying characters in games. This is done by analyzing several examples of computer-based games and similar playful activities, both to see which models of dialogues are used but also to suggest possible ways of expanding gameplay through using other dialogue models. Uses of existing models for dialogues within games are identified but an additional model, the Game State-based approach to dialogues, is introduced. The possible implications of the changes in gameplay are described through the use of gameplay design patterns, offering a way to encode design knowledge explicitly and link that knowledge to other gameplay design pattern collections. Keywords: Gameplay patterns, dialogue systems Exploring Aesthetic Ideals of Gameplay
Lundgren Sus, Bergström Karl J., Björk Staffan This paper describes a theoretical exploration of aesthetics ideals of gameplay. Starting from observations about the game artifact, several gameplay properties that can affect the aesthetical experience are identified, e.g. tempting challenges, cohesion, and gamer interaction. These properties are then used to describe several aesthetical ideals of gameplay, e.g. emergence, reenactment, meditative, and camaraderie. The properties and ideals provide concepts for how games attribute aesthetical value to gameplay design and how they distinguish their own preferences from inherent qualities of a game artifact. Keywords: Gameplay, Aesthetics ‘What sort of Fish was it?’ How Players Understand their Narrative in Online Games
MacCallum-Stewart Esther Online worlds have become a fundamental element of the virtual landscape. The development of MMORPGs has helped give credence to the idea that online spaces can support valid social communities. Having proved that these communities exist, scholars must now decide whether these communities are different to those in the 'real' world. What makes gaming communities stand out? This paper looks at how players contextualise their behaviour within game narratives. In particular, the ways that players manipulate the divergent narratives of each game, and the paradoxes that these structures create is investigated. MMORPGs are rife with social tension. Players appear to use a series of different social codes when they justify their behaviour, borrowing from different rules sets dictated by circumstances in the game according to their need. To contextualise this, this paper examines how players express and argue their ideas through their understanding of the game world and narrative. Like fan communities , players appropriate the MMORPG text for themselves, reinscribing it according to their own conceptions. However, whereas fans must do this away from their key source, in MMORPGs, players discuss the text as they enact it. Narratives are deliberately dynamic – purporting to give players agency to move at their own pace or to chose the routes and standpoints they take throughout each game. Thus fans actively work upon the text in a much broader context, and their discussions are often visible to large amounts of people within the game. If all players consider themselves as fans, then how does this affect the perception of the text itself? Keywords: MMORPG, online games, narrative, fans, textual poaching, virtual worlds, social communities Effects of Peripheral Visual Information on Performance of Video Game with Hemi-Spherical Immersive Projection Screen
Seya Yasuhiro, Sato Kotaro, Kimura Yusuke, Ookubo Akira, Yamagata Hitoshi, Kasahara Kazumi,Hiroya Fujikake, Yamamoto Yuki, Ikeda Hanako, Watanabe Katsumi The recent development of immersive displays with high resolution and a wide field of view (e.g., hemi-spherical projection screen) has made it possible to play video games with higher levels of presence. However, it is not yet clear how players utilize the visual and auditory information provided by such displays for game play. In this paper, we report three experiments on an arcade video game "Mobile Suit GUNDAM Senjyo no Kizuna" with a hemi-ellipsoidal panoramic optical display (POD). Highly trained participants (professional game debuggers) were employed. They played the game with various visual masks (Experiments 1 and 2) and sound conditions (with and without sound; Experiment 3). In all of the experiments, the game performance (i.e., game score) was recorded as well as ratings for enjoyment, sensation of presence, and visually induced motion sickness as the game was played. The results suggest that players have a certain size of “effective visual space” in which peripheral information can be utilized. Furthermore, the results suggest that auditory information, together with a wide range of visual information, would enhance a player’s enjoyment and sensation of presence during game play. Keywords: Immersive display, effective visual space, method of restricting visual space Understanding Empathy in Children through 3D Character Design
Chan Kah, Easterly Douglas, Thomassen Aukje Health, particularly diet and everyday nutrition, as the ultimate causal factor in life is an important aspect of every child’s education. Meanwhile, computer generated (CG) 3- dimensional (3-D) graphics is a medium often used by entertainment and advertising. Educational intervention to help children make appropriate dietary choices can be designed by employing similar methods used by entertainment and advertising, such as 3-D characters aimed at children. The question that this research asked is: can creating an empathic bond between 3-D characters and children communicate a healthy nutrition message effectively? This thesis is based on qualitative research founded on the constructionist theory that focuses on exploring the perspective of children via focus groups. Educational designs based on familiar computer-generated graphics will help equip children to deal with nutritional and dietary choices, ultimately initiating behavioural change as their relationship with food matures earlier. Empathy on the children’s and adult’s sides of the healthy nutrition conversation is important to establish this relationship in children’s nutritional decisions. The main challenge for nutrition education is not in shortterm diversions, but long-term changes in behavioural responses in media literacy. A constructionist approach of helping children work through advertising by improving their media vocabulary would be a more sustainable approach to enhancing their ability to decode advertising rhetoric and in turn forming their own informed opinion and responses. Industry referenced educational content intent on healthy lifestyles can balance the prevalent advertising messages leading to a more balanced overall media that children are exposed to. Keywords: Children, empathy, 3D character design, emotional connection, education, communication Collaboration, Creativity and Learning in a Play Community: A Study of The University of There
Pearce, Celia This paper is the first in a series presenting findings from a yearlong mixed-methods study of the University of There (UOT), a player-run distributed learning community within the online graphical 3D world There.com. UOT is both a large-scale collaborative project and a learning environment within a virtual world originally designed as a social play space. The study employed in-world participant observation, in-world and face-to-face interviews, analysis of player-created virtual artifacts, study of extra-virtual and supplemental media (such as web sites, videos and forums), as well as a survey instrument, to understand the dynamics of this distributed, collaborative learning community. The study centered on the following research questions: How does distributed play motivate creative collaboration and learning? How is creative collaboration in game communities sustained over time? What motivates players to maintain engagement in both the long and short term? How does the game software itself support or hinder collaboration and learning? How do players exploit, subvert or augment play software to support these activities? What interaction tools and methods do players use to undertake creative collaboration and support learning and teaching? What can practices of both collaboration and teaching within the play-driven context of the University of There teach us about distributed collaboration and learning in general? Can these principles be translated into other contexts? The study found the following: Play creates forms of affinity, commitment and attention, three factors which, according to Nardi, enhance collaboration. Staff and faculty reported that their volunteer contribution to the UOT was a source of happiness. Personal relationships, creative activities, and a love of learning were other motivating factors. The play context provided staff and instructors with a framework in which to play with teaching, resulting in experimental “folk” methods, many of which reflected well-studied theories of learning in games. In addition UOT’s being a peer-based constructionist learning community, the study concluded that There.com’s “culture of constructionism” makes it a learning environment by definition, since players must learn in order to create. Keywords: Learning Communities, Play Communities, Distributed Collaboration, Distributed Learning, Virtual Worlds, Online Games Mapping the game landscape: Locating genres using functional classification
Dahlskog Steve, Kamstrup Andreas, Aarseth Espen Are typical computer game genres still valid descriptors and useful for describing game structure and game content? Games have changed from simple to complex and from single function to multi function. By identifying structural differences in game elements we develop a more nuanced model to categorized games and use cluster analysis as a descriptive tool in order to do so. The cluster analysis of 75 functionally different games shows that the two perspectives (omnipresent and vagrant), as well as challenges, mutability and savability are important functional categories to use in order to describe games. Keywords: Game analysis, game typology, cluster analysis, digital games Agency and the Free Will debate [Extended Abstract]
Parsler Justin This paper will take a close look of the term agency in Game Studies, identifying how it is presently used (on those occasions when it is) and suggesting how it could be used more cogently. Like so many terms in Game Studies - narrative and immersion as two of the more prominent examples – any author seeking to use the term has first to define it, resulting in a general avoidance of its use. Keywords: Free will, agency, determinism. The Player Character as Performing Object
Westecott Emma Engagement in games is manifest through a player’s representation of action in game. The main mechanism for this engagement is through direct control of a player character. This control mechanism can be seen as a form of puppetry in which the player manipulates a game figure ranging from the abstract to the super-human. Through a focus on the player character, this paper posits that it may be productive to conceive of the player focus as one akin to that of the puppet artist, or puppeteer, and discusses one approach to unpacking the abstract sign systems of gameplay in this setting. The player character acts out the movements of the player and marks her progression in game. A doubling happens in this action, between the physical movements on the controller and the representation of agency on screen. As a player I act, then watch the results of my action on screen, always already audience to my own play practice. One ongoing challenge for games studies is the framing of the relationship between the player and her player character. From a phenomenological perspective this has been conceived of as an instrumental extension into the game world. Using the ‘binocular lens’ of performance analysis semiotic work is necessary to balance our sense of the improvisational act of digital game-play. The player binds to the lived experience of game-play through engagement with the sign systems at play in a specific gaming experience. Puppetry has existed across world cultures, as entertainment, ritual and celebration, and broadly involves the animation of inanimate performing objects. The insertion of objects between the performer and the audience allows for different, and deeper, levels of signification than live actors alone can offer. Puppets consist a developed form of performing object, one that moves. The fascination with puppets reaches far back into history, revealing our yearning to play god, to exert domination over our human experience. Similarly, the seductive illusion of control plays a central part in the appeal inherent in digital game form. In the modern setting much work on puppetry remains relatively hidden across a broad spectrum of fields, from computer science to anthropology. However performance theorists such as Tillis introduce a broad semiotics to conceive of the multitude of ways we engage with puppetry. Other theorists have engaged in embracing digital and mediated puppet form, not least in games studies in areas such as machinima and alternate-reality gaming, yet attention has been slow in broadening the application of puppet theory to player characters. Tillis offers a focus on signs of design, movement and speech as core to building an aesthetic of the puppet. For the player character signifiers of affect and control require addition to any such tentative schema. This paper argues that the metaphor of the puppet offers a useful frame for the central figure of our game-play focus by allowing for a kind of ‘double-vision’ that enables a player character to be seen in two ways at once, ‘as a perceived object and as an imagined life’. Using the tools of performance analysis this paper addresses the liminal relationship between player and player character in the flux of play. The intention is to offer an explication of the range of methods, whether stylistic, instrumental or kinesthetic, deployed in Keywords: player character, game puppets, puppetry, performing objects, performance theory, game studies, theatre semiotics Play as Transgression: An Ethnographic Approach to Queer Game Cultures
Sundén Jenny This paper is based on an ongoing ethnography of a GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) guild in the MMOG World of Warcraft. Drawing on queer/feminist theory, the argument concentrates on sexuality as resource for ‘transgressive play’. The notion of transgressive play is usually taken to mean play against the ‘ideal’ or ‘implied’ player of the game, of playing the game in ways not anticipated by design. For queer gamers, sexuality comes into play in ways that make visible the cultural norms of the ideal player – a player who is at least symbolically male and straight. This ethnographic work indicates that there are queer uses of game spaces that in significant ways make visible – and play around with – norms and expectations that are shaping what online game communities are, and what they could be. Keywords: embodiment, ethnography, game studies, gaymers, queer theory, sexuality, transgressive play, World of Warcraft In search of a minimalist game
Myers David This essay is a re-examination and critique of existing game definitions in parallel with the analysis of Juul. Juul’s original study revealed six basic game components; the analysis here pares these to four more definitive components, isolated in game form: rules, goals, opposition, and representation. These four components are used to construct a ―minimalist‖ game. The paper describes the implications of these minimalist game components to contrasting foundationalist and essentialist theories of games. Specific game examples are used to demonstrate how a minimalist game model might be used to distinguish among games, simulation, and play. Keywords: Game theory, game model, game rules, game goals, representation, philosophy, minimalism. Workshop: Ethics in Videogames [Extended Abstracts]
Zagal José P., Schrier Karen, Sicart Miguel This workshop will highlight the experiences of researchers and practitioners who are investigating and designing games in the growing field of ethics and games. In the first half of the workshop, we will lead a discussion of best practices for designing and studying games that enable the practice of ethical thinking and reasoning skills. We will also evaluate possible methodologies and challenges for assessing ethics in games. Finally, we will discuss ethical considerations surrounding the development of games and gamer communities. In the second half of the workshop, participants will engage in a series of hands-on activities designed to put into practice many of the issues discussed earlier. These activities will include exercises in game design as well as game analysis Keywords: Ethics, videogames, ethical reasoning, workshop From Simulation to Imitation: New Controllers, New Forms of Play
Jenson Jennifer, Castell Suzanne de In this paper, we briefly outline some of the early research in the field of digital games and education that attempted to answer the question of what and how people learn from playing games. We then turn to the recent revolution in gameplay controllers (from the classic controller to the touch screen, Wii wand, plastic guitars, microphones, minitennis racquets and plastic drums) to argue that gameplay has only just undergone a significant epistemological shift, one that no longer sees gameplay as the simulation of actions on a screen, but instead enables imitation as the central element of gameplay, perhaps effectively for the first time giving players access to a form of play-based learning relegated to the very young. This radical modification of the way games are played, from simulation to imitation, has already attracted new audiences: in Japan, female players exceed male players on the handheld Nintendo DS, in the U.S. and in Canada and elsewhere seniors’ homes are purchasing the Nintendo Wii (with its suite of sports and fitness games) to encourage residents to exercise, and since December 2007, when Rock Band deftly beat out Guitar Hero as everyone’s favourite game in which players form a band and play using a “guitar”, drums and a microphone as controllers. It has never been so obvious that playing games is not a “solo” act: the player is both acting and acted upon by the technology, and his/her play is very much situated within a broader network of actions, actors and activities which are community-based and supported. The question of what and how players are learning in games has been at the forefront of research on education and gameplay in the last several years when we began to ask what and how people learned from playing commercial entertainment-oriented digital games. Long viewed as artifacts of an “unpopular culture,” particularly by educators and educational theorists, commercial videogames are now recognized as highly effective learning environments where player (as learner) agency is paramount, and where the acquisition of knowledge and competency is infused in engaging and pleasurable play, not a prescribed task (de Castell and Jenson, 2003, 2005; Gee 2003, 2005; Prensky, 2006; Squire, 2002). As such, the primary argument for the paper will be to examine new controllers not as simulative experiences, but as technologies of imitation that support players’ embodied competence, rather than players’ ability to simulate such competence. This hitherto neglected distinction appears to lie at the heart of ubiquitous claims for the power of learning through game-based simulations, and propose that framing inquiry in the terms of what are distinctively meant and offered by simulation and imitation to be a critical conceptual tool for developing theories and practices of digital game-based learning. Whose conflation is at the heart of ubiquitous claims for the power of learning through game-based simulations. Keywords: Play, digital games, hardware, learning environments, education Teleporters, Tunnels & Time: Understanding Warp Devices In Videogames
Gazzard Alison The warp is a device that reframes notions of time and space. It is a common cultural artefact, one that audiences have come to recognise and believe in through various media. We accept the bed in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the Tardis in Doctor Who, the supralight speed engines of science fiction, as time/space travel devices in order to get characters from A to B, to advance their progress along the story path. The warp as a path device can also be seen in board games such as Snakes and Ladders, where both the snake and ladder sections break the linearity of moving the character piece from square to square regularly up and down the game-board. It is therefore natural that such a time/space device has continued and been reconstructed within videogames. The virtual gameworld is itself a place able to reconstruct time and space; both Juul and Atkins discuss how players’ perceptions of time and narrative elements within the videogame can be rearranged, but the warp, a significant ‘re-arranger’, is rarely discussed further or in detail. The warp is used as a common device within videogames to transport the player from their location to somewhere else within the gamespace. Although commonly acknowledged through the hidden tunnels within Super Mario Bros, the warp is not a straightforward device, and can manifest itself in various ways during gameplay. It may be found in deliberately installed puzzles, and by the ‘aberrant player’. It may be a way of avoiding danger, of ‘jumping’ over sections previously achieved, or even of cheating. It may be the punishment for straying from a ‘good path’, or the reward for a particular act. Whatever its use or function, the warp exists within the virtual world as a means of managing time, space and narrative. The warp turns paths experienced by the player into fixed ‘tracks’, where navigational control is removed whilst in the warp sequence, and understanding the warp in this way allows us to further understand the player’s relationship with the game paths they are moving along, the stories they move within. This paper discusses the multiple characteristics of the warp by identifying its use in contrasting videogame genres. These characteristics open up ways of discussing the aesthetics of the warp experience for the player and how its use affects path structures as well as time and narrative elements within videogames. The discussion will include both the built in, deliberately installed ‘puzzle-based’ warps and the ‘inadvertent warps’ sought by those seeking to discover more of the games ‘algorithm’. Keywords: Warp, space, time, narrative, path What We Talk About When We Talk About Game Aesthetics
Niedenthal Simon Digital games are commonly described as phenomena that combine aesthetic, social and technological elements, yet our understanding of the aesthetic element of games and play is perhaps the least developed of all. All too often, an aesthetics perspective within game studies and design discourses is relegated to a marginal role, by conflating game aesthetics with graphics and “eye candy,” or by limiting aesthetic discussion to graphic style analysis or debates on the question “are games art?” Changing game technologies, as well as arguments from within philosophy, psychology, interaction design theory and cultural theory, call for us to examine the implicit and explicit assumptions we make when we write about aesthetics within game studies research, as a prelude to reclaiming a perspective that will allow us to better understand the way in which games function as sites for sensory and embodied play, creative activity and aesthetic experience. Keywords: Game Aesthetics, Game Design What Videogame Making Can Teach Us About Access and Ethics in Participatory Culture
Kafai Yasmin B., Burke William Q., Fields Deborah A. In “Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture”, Jenkins and colleagues (2006) outlined three challenges in their participatory competencies framework that need to be addressed to prepare youth for full involvement in a digital culture – participation, transparency, and ethics. Expanding upon the framework of our earlier work, in this paper we examine more closely two aspects of Jenkins and colleagues’ challenges – the participation gap and the ethics challenge – as they apply to game-making activities in schools. We report on a four-month ethnographic study documenting youth’s production of video games in both an after school club and classroom setting. The growing use of videogamemaking for learning in schools offers youth the opportunity to no longer simply be consumers but also producers of technology. But as kids learned to contribute as such producers, both participatory and ethical issues arose in the ways they were willing or reluctant to share their own ideas and projects with their peers. Schools’ long-standing focus on individual achievement and traditional notions of plagiarism drew these issues of participation and ethics to the foreground, making them especially relevant considerations given on-going efforts to bring more game playing and making activities into schools. Keywords: Game modding, cheating, gaming literacies, access In the Horrifying Magic Cycle of Resident Evil 5: A Case Study [Abstract]
Perron Bernard In two previous essays (Perron, 2006 and Arsenault & Perron 2008), I have conceptualized the partaking in a game as a cognitive frame, as an ongoing process. To explain the gamer’s immersion and progression through a game, I have resorted to the figure of the cycle, of the spiral instead of talking about Huizinga’s “magic circle”. In this model, three interconnected spirals are represented: the heuristic spiral of gameplay (the most important), the heuristic spiral of narrative and the hermeneutic spiral. These are the cycles the gamer has to go through to answer gameplay, narrative, and interpretative questions. More the gamer learns to play the game, more he learns about the story and meanings, more he gains skills and knowledge. Keywords: A Platform-Independent Model for Videogame Gameplay Specification
Montero-Reyno Emanuel, Carsí-Cubel José Á. Videogames require a more precise specification language to define and communicate gameplay than rules written in natural language. The proposed platform-independent model for videogame gameplay specification offers game designers a precise model to describe, analyze and communicate gameplay from early stages of development. The social context diagram defines how many players and teams interact with the game system. The structure diagram defines the game elements, attributes and events that compose the game system. And the rule set defines the game system behavior, implicitly specifying gameplay through precisely defined declarative rules. Keywords: Videogame Gameplay Specification, Game Design, Platform-Independent Model What Makes Online Collectible Card Games Fun to Play?
Johansson Stefan J., Online Collectible Card Games is a relatively new genre of games that allow the players to collect cards, combine them into decks, and play the decks against opponents through the Internet. Players get engaged in all these three levels of the game, and we relate these levels to the theories of what makes a computer game fun to play. The Eye of Judgment (EoJ) is taken as an example of such a game, and we compare the theoretical study to the results of interviews with former EoJ players to validate the models. Keywords: CCGs, Eye of Judgement, Card Games, Fun Making Sense in Ludic Worlds. The Idealization of Immersive Postures in Movies and Video Games
Therrien Carl In the ongoing efforts to theorize the interactive experience proposed by video games, it is common to make a distinction between fictional elements and the gameplay in itself. E. Adams distinguished between tactical, strategic and fictional immersions. In Half-Real, J. Juul has notoriously declared that video games encompass two things: fictional worlds and real rules. Many approaches stress the distinct nature of the immersive experience in games on account of their participatory nature. By contrast, M. Csikszentmihalyi’s model of flow – a common foundation to discuss immersion in sports and games – has been applied without any modifications to art appreciation, an “activity” that many would argue doesn’t propose clear goals and retroactions. Is there any common ground between games and fictional forms that can help us understand the cultural magnitude achieved by their synthesis through the video game medium? Building on current doctoral research and on Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s effort to theorize our involvement with digital worlds as a continuation of the fictional immersion experienced in other media, this contribution seeks to evaluate the relevance of a general framework to discuss immersion. The optimization of experience in both video games and fiction films, and the various strategies that seek to shape an ideal immersive posture for us Keywords: Immersion, Fictional worlds, Simulation, Optimization of Experience Patterns of Play: Play-Personas in User-Centred Game Development
Canossa Alessandro, Drachen Anders In recent years certain trends from User-Centered design have been seeping into the practice of designing computer games. The balance of power between game designers and players is being renegotiated in order to find a more active role for players and provide them with control in shaping the experiences that games are meant to evoke. A growing player agency can turn both into an increased sense of player immersion and potentially improve the chances of critical acclaim. This paper presents a possible solution to the challenge of involving the user in the design of interactive entertainment by adopting and adapting the "persona" framework introduced by Alan Cooper in the field of Human Computer Interaction. The original method is improved by complementing the traditional ethnographic descriptions of personas with parametric, quantitative, data-oriented models of patterns of user behaviour for computer games. Keywords: Play persona, game experience, game design, user centered design, user experience design, gameplay metrics, game mechanics The Gigue Is Up: High Culture Gets Game
Jenson Jennifer, Castell Suzanne de, Taylor Nicholas, Droumeva Milena, Fisher Stephanie This paper documents the design, development, and extensive play-testing of a Flash-based Baroque music game, “Tafelkids: The Quest for Arundo Donax”, focusing on the tension between constructing an online resource that an audience aged 8-14 would find fun and engaging, and the directive to include historical information and facts, as well as convey some of the sounds, musical structures and conventions of Baroque music, history and culture through play. We further document 3 large play testing sessions, in which we observed, in total, over 150 students aged 12-14 play the game. We conclude with a discussion of the particular challenges in designing a bridge from propositions to play, in effect digitally re-mediating, Baroque music education and thereby address the broader epistemological question of what and how we may best learn, and learn best, from games and play. Keywords: Educational games, serious games, music education, play learning, design-based research Commoditization of Helping Players Play: Rise of the Service Paradigm
Stenros Jaakko, Sotamaa Olli The paper provides a cultural and economic background for the rise of the service paradigm in the realm of games. Both the complicated relation between products and services and a variety of contemporary examples are examined in order to develop a detailed understanding of the ecology of games-related services. From mapping the current situation we move on to create a particular player service model. The model is created both to help analytically dissect what player services are and to pinpoint some blind spots in current service design. The model can be further used to rethink the current industry ecology and to potentially find entirely new semi-independent service domains. Keywords: Games as services, player service model, game industry, commoditization The Cheating Assemblage in MMORPGs: Toward a sociotechnical description of cheating
Paoli Stefano De, Kerr Aphra This paper theoretically and empirically explores cheating in MMORPGs. This paper conceptualises cheating in MMORPGs as a sociotechnical practice which draws upon a non-linear assemblage of human actors and non-human artefacts, in which the practice of cheating is the result or the outcome of an assemblage. We draw upon the assemblage conceptualizations proposed in [16] and [8] and on empirical data taken from a pilot study we have conducted during the period September-November 2008 and from an ethnography we are conducting in the MMORPG Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) since January 2009. This game in particular was chosen because CipSoft, the company that develops the game, launched an anticheating campaign at the beginning of 2009. Keywords: Cheating, MMORPGs, assemblage theory, sociotechnical assemblage Keeping It Reel: Is Machinima A Form Of Art?
Champion Erik The grumpy gamers amongst us are still smarting over the important, challenging and frustrating questions made famous by Roger Ebert and Steven Spielberg; whether games could be classed as artworks, as capable of raising nobler emotions, or whether as works of art they could even be uttered in the same breath as cinema or literature. And if games cannot be art, how could machinima stake claims to being a form of art? Not only will I suggest the hackneyed question “but is it art” or “could it be seen as art” is important, I will suggest why this question is of particular interest and relevance to machinima. Keywords: Machinima, game theory, definitions of art. Levels of Complexity: Cultural Diversity, Politics and Digital Games [Abstract]
Kerr Aphra In Europe in the recent past public interest and cultural arguments have been used to achieve exceptions for cultural products from free trade agreements and have led to the development of funding programmes at national and European level to support the production and distribution of certain types of media products. This has been given added impetus by a shift in cultural policy towards ‘cultural diversity’, epitomised by UNESCO’s Declaration of Cultural Diversity. Under pressure from the growth of the Canadian, South Korean and Chinese game development industries policy makers and industry associations in many European countries are starting to consider the cultural role of digital games and funding game production. This trend is epitomized by the French tax credit system for games production and the establishment of funding schemes in France, the UK, Germany and Scandinavia. This paper explores the issue of cultural diversity and digital games and assesses the degree to which you can take a concept, which has a strong legacy in traditional media and national policy regimes, and use it in the context of digital games. The paper starts by assessing the methodological, conceptual and historical issues raised for scholars and policy makers who wish to examine cultural diversity and digital media in the context of global production networks, transnational audiences and user generated content. This is followed by an analysis of secondary data (etc. reports, statistics) in relation to the flow and cultural diversity of digital game production, content and players. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for cultural policies which tend to focus and operate at the national level. Keywords: Where the Women Are(n't): Gender and a North American ‘Pro-gaming’ Scene [Abstract]
Taylor Nicholas This paper draws from my doctoral research with a community of competitive Halo 3 players, an ethnography of local, national and international digital gaming tournaments that explores the professionalization of digital play, orchestrated by an emergent ‘e-Sports’ industry. The research for the paper makes use of audiovisual clips of team-based competitive Halo 3 tournament play at three different sites – a small-scale Toronto-based LAN tournament, a 2008 Major League Gaming (MLG) event, and the 2008 World Cyber Games (WCG) in Cologne, Germany – to examine how, when and where gender is enacted as players engage in emergent forms of digital play that are discursively framed, and aggressively marketed, as sport. Keywords: Locative Life: Geocaching, Mobile Gaming, and the Reassertion of Proximity [Abstract]
Farman Jason While ubiquitous computing has been developing around much speculation and theorization for quite some time, the current uses of mobile and locative technologies are bringing these ideas to fruition. Mobile games - from geocaching to site specific performance games like Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke - are moving the interface away from personal computing toward physical computing that engages the immediate social space. Geocaching, which has its origins in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, is a GPS game that utilizes coordinates on a mobile device in order to track down containers that typically contain a logbook, various items left behind by gamers, and sometimes a “Travel Bug” that is meant to travel from cache to cache (moved by active gamers and tracked by its owner online). Once located, the gamer signs the logbook, re-hides the cache, and describes the find online to the geocaching community. By combining the interfaces of a mobile device, the Internet, and the physical landscape, this mobile game enacts the embodied space of cyberspace in a way that seamlessly blends and coheres. Here, social networking and the gaming community move away from individual space of computer screen to social space of material environment. The result is a reiteration of proximity in an era where the space of cyberspace is not limited by physical location. While social networking online allows people to interact with others around the globe, mobile games like geocaching reassert the significance of proximity and site-specificity. Keywords: Tabletop Augmented Reality Games: Play Outside the Display [Abstract]
Xu Yan, Barba Evan, MacIntyreBlair The current generation of handheld devices have substantially greater processor speeds and graphics capabilities than the previous generation. With these gains, handheld devices have crossed an important technological threshold. It is now possible to blend the methods and practices used to create larger scale Augmented Reality (AR) experiences with those used to design handheld games. Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR) games render rich graphical content into live video of the physical world, captured from the integrated camera and displayed on the handheld device. We are particularly interested in using HAR technologies that create a tight coupling between virtual content and objects in the physical world, enabling styles of interaction and types of play that leverage the clear relationships between the physical and virtual worlds. The resulting HAR games represent a new genre of gaming with its own unique set of affordances. However, HAR applications do not fit neatly into the theories and practices of any of the disciplines that intersect this research space. For example, notions of “presence” typically used to evaluate the effectiveness of achieving non-mediation in AR applications are confounded by the handheld form factor and the mobility it entails. Conversely, the constraint of being coupled to objects and events in the physical world renders many of the practices and assumptions behind mobile computing (computing anywhere, anytime) inappropriate. Similarly, practices found in game design, such as paper prototyping, need to be updated to account for the unique interactive affordances of this new medium. Keywords: Abstractions of a meaningless act: (spending) time in the gaming world [Abstract]
Long Vanessa However distant the universe, however futuristic the scenery, it is common in video games to see and take part in elements and activities that are familiar to the world in which we live. These familiar objects fill and yet somehow evade our attention. Processes such as transporting oneself, exchanging money, or making contact with another individual are mechanically sound aspects of the game itself, but they remain a means to an end, and because of this they are rarely central plot points of the game. So what does including these familiar elements really mean? Keywords: “It’s in the game” and above the game: An analysis of the players of sports videogames [Abstract]
Conway Steven Videogames and sport have a long and productive relationship. Not only does sport serve as inspiration for many computer games (1958’s Tennis For Two is perhaps the earliest example), but it also shares many characteristics with what constitutes a digital games-playing experience; mastering techniques, performing under pressure, working as part of a team, and of course the indelible aspect of competition. In products such as the highly successful FIFA [3] and Pro Evolution Soccer series [6], the experience of watching sport on television is remediated [1] so that the videogame may surreptitiously blend into the wider culture of football. Official licenses are invoked and player likenesses are painstakingly recreated alongside a plethora of physical and mental statistics with the aim to accurately transfer the ludic ability of the sportsman from the real world into the virtual. In doing so the product creates a unique connection between footballer, sport, culture, videogame and player where the use of one can be informed, or indeed changed, by the use of another. Such a complex relationship invites the asking of numerous questions: How does this transmedial relationship with sport affect the gamer’s understanding, utilization and consumption of the videogame? What does the sports genre offer the consumer that is not available to them in other sports media? What position does the videogame incarnation occupy within the user’s comprehension of the culture and community? Keywords: More Than Just a Combo of Slaps? Representations and Experiences of LGBT Gamers On and Beyond the Screen [Abstract]
Light Ben Although there is a growing body of work surrounding gender and digital games (Bryce and Rutter, 2006; Crawford and Gosling 2005; Yates and Littleton, 1999), the separate but related area regarding the sexuality of players has yet to receive a serious amount of attention (Bertozzi, 2009; Sunden 2008). In this paper, I wish to contribute to this area through an analysis of the representation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) themes and characters on and beyond the gaming screen. In order to do this, I analyse materials of and about gaming across a number of platforms. From this analysis it clear that LGBT issues and characters are engaged with in digital games in different ways. For example, such engagements can be socially exclusive, as with profile banning in the Xbox live community, socially inclusive, such as the possibility of gay marriage in the Temple of Elemental Evil and, instrumental, where ‘sexy lesbians’ are deployed for boys in Fear Effect 2. Moreover, even in cognisance of the fact that there is a large amount of guess work and labelling of characters, leading to the status of certain characters being contested, it is also clear that those who would self define as Lesbian, Gay, Bi or Trans are included – sometimes in the most unlikely of places. It is also clear that LGBT characters are included in periferal ways and as integral to the game. They can also have ludic value (as in Bully – Scholarship Edition) and narrataive value (as in GTA IV). Moreover, as with other aspects of digital gaming I hightlight instances of intertextuality (Crawford, 2006). For example, comparisons are made between developers actions with respect to character deployment ingame and the experiences of the LGBT community beyond the screen. I also demonstrate that LGBT gamers experiences of gaming spaces beyond game play can be safe, considered and humourous, but also subject to homophobia. I argue that this is a fruitful area requiring more research, even though, for those who identify as LGBT, including myself, sexuality does not necessarily figure in gameplay and their experiences on or beyond the screen. Keywords: MMOGs and the Ecology of Fiction: Understanding LOTRO as Transmedial World [Abstract]
Klastrup Lisbeth, Tosca Susana The aim of this paper is to examine the (medium-related) particular strengths and weaknesses of computer games that are part of a wider ecology of fictions previously described by us as transmedial worlds. Keywords: Balance Boards and Dance Pads: The Impact of Innovation on Gendered Access to Gaming [Abstract]
Harvey Alison This paper considers the impact of innovations in game interfaces, locations, and controllers in considerations of access to gaming for female and male players. The role of gender in video game culture has been considered from the perspectives of production, culture, marketing, content, mechanics, and preferences, and several scholars have argued that we need to understand gendered preferences and play through assemblages and networks of these elements [1, 2, 3]. Access to games is argued in this paper to be a key dimension of these assemblages, as it is the factor that will determine the experiences that in turn shape play preferences that lead to particular game genre choices. This paper considers innovations in gaming, including mini-games in virtual communities and groundbreaking controllers like Dance Dance Revolution dance pads, Wii- motes, nunchucks, balance boards, rock game guitars, drums, and microphones. These innovations mark a move towards a more diverse terrain of gaming that may challenge understandings of video game play as hypermasculine. Keywords: Towards a Socio-Cultural Cartography of In-Game Protests
Chan Dean In-game protests are a dynamic part of a burgeoning global cartography of activism and mass mobilisation unfolding across virtual worlds. Such protests nonetheless deserve to be negotiated on their own specific terms if only because these situational inter-plays of political, social, and gaming practices provide a unique means to gain insight into the socio-cultural contexts and imperatives that variously provoke, animate, and enable these acts. By focusing on two extended case study analyses—(1) U.S. artist Joseph DeLappe’s online war memorial and protest project, dead-in-iraq; and (2) the mass protest triggered by the sighting of a Japanese military flag in the Chinese online game Fantasy Westward Journey—this paper is illustrative of interpretive approaches for tentatively mapping and negotiating the sociocultural constituencies of in-game protests. The chosen case studies exemplify how Web 2.0 participatory culture remains informed at base by an acute sense of locality and placespecificity. Such are the grounded premises and possibilities for developing future and further theorisations on the global cartography of in-game protests. Keywords: in-game protest, socio-cultural, mass mobilisation, online games, Joseph DeLappe, China, Web 2.0 Bridging Gaming and Designing: Two Sites of Informal Design Learning [Abstract]
Duncan Sean In recent years, games and learning researchers have increasingly become interested in the "affinity spaces" (Gee, 2004) around popular videogames, identifying them as instructional spaces (Squire and Giovanetto, 2008) and contexts in which sophisticated reasoning practices are enacted (Steinkuehler and Duncan, 2008). However, the motivation for participation in these communities as well as the goals of the participants have only rarely come under scrutiny (Duncan and Gee, 2008). How does the notion of "design" (e.g., New London Group, 1996; Kafai, 1995; Hayes and Games, 2008) help to explain the ways that players are increasingly engaged in productive, informal communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) around commercial videogames? In this presentation, I propose to elaborate the development of a "designer identity" among gamers by focusing on activities within two of these spaces -- the official forums for the massively-multiplayer game World of Warcraft (WoW), and the design activities around a popular "YouTube for Flash games," Kongregate.com. Keywords: Sex and Videogames: A Case of Misappearance? [Abstract]
Krzywinska Tanya The focus of this paper is on sex and videogames, seeking to provide a counterweight to the sensationalist treatment of the topic within the popular press. The author argues that there is surprisingly little explicit sexual imagery in games and asks what accounts for its disproportionate absence. Keywords: sex, sexuality, rhetorics of representation, game design Creativity in the Game Design Classroom
Hammer Jessica The way we educate new game designers has profound implications for their later creativity and productivity – and for the health of the game industry as a whole. Will we turn out a generation of students who are comfortable with innovation in game design? Or will we teach them to make safe, conventional, predictable choices? Keywords: Women and Productivity [Abstracts]
Wirman Hanna, Chess Shira, Albrechtslund Anne-Mette, Enevold Jessica The following abstracts: Playing, Dashing, and Working: Simulated Productive Play in the Dash games Shira Chess Gender Stories: Identity Construction in an Online Gaming Community Anne-Mette Albrechtslund: Playing Productive: Pragmatic Uses of Gaming Jessica Enevold The Silent Work of The Sims 2 Bedroom(s) Hanna Wirman Keywords: co-creativity, gender, productivity, The Sims 2, productivity, play, mothers, pragmatic-uses-of-gaming, narrative, gender, identity, communication, gender, play, productivity, Diner Dash, leisure The Troubled Transition to Game Study Projects
Newman Ken This paper reviews the experience of Students in HE level Game Courses making the transition from taught units to self–managed study projects – particularly the problem of choosing and refining a good study topic. This review draws on examples of 40+ student projects from 3 universities, and the experiences 6 supervisors in informal discussion with the author over a period of 4 years. The paper identifies common trends, mistakes and problems. Patterns emerge of students struggling with the multi-disciplinarity and newness of the field, the lack of authoritative canon, the difficulty of articulating a topic, and the tendancy of game students to stray into domains beyond their experience. From these common problems the paper proposes a checklist of steps to guide the topic selection process. Keywords: game studies, game research, game students Take One – or Three – for the Team: Consumerism as Play
Jacobs Melinda With the expansion of consciousness driven by further discovery and creation of the digital realm, scholars have witnessed the birth of societal structures and cultures, originally found in the physical realm, within the digital realm. This has been documented mainly in the creation of communities within MMORPGs and synthetic worlds. Although these communities are defined as being based around fundamental principles of “play” and “fun”, I argue identical communities are being formed within sites dealing with consumerism, and these communities are not exclusive to these virtual worlds. Within my paper I will address the concept of consumerism as play using the wholesale outlet site woot.com, and their live-time sales experience, called a “woot-off.” I will analyze how the Internet has allowed for such a type of consumerism that breaks the norms of consuming in the physical world, allowing what once was a normally individualistic goal – purchasing an item for oneself that one wants – to turn into a group goal – helping others get to items they wish to purchase by “taking one for the team.” Keywords: consumerism, Internet communities, Internet culture “I’m not afraid to die, Mom”:Parental perceptions & stories of their adolescents gaming [Extended Abstract]
Madill Leanna Media reports such as “Virtual Worlds threaten ‘values”(BBC news, 2007); “Violent youth crime rising, statisticsshow” (The Vancouver Sun, 2007); “Hooked on games:battling a cyber-addiction” (Times Colonist, 2007); “Newvideo games sell sex instead of mayhem” (Times Colonist,2006) sensationalize video games and imply a dire state ofviolence, health related problems, isolation, and addictioncaused by video game play. Parents appear to be situatedbetween these frightening and guilt-ridden reports of doomand knowing their own child, his/her abilities andpotentials. What are parents thinking or feeling about videogame content and play for themselves and for theiradolescents? How do they interact with their children andvideo games? What do parents want to know more about?What are their stories? Keywords: Video gaming, parents, learning, adolescents Streets = Play = Fun [Workshop Abstract]
Udayasankar Subalekha, Wagner LeAnne “Big Games are human-powered software for cities, life-size collaborative hallucinations, and serious fun” - Frank Lantz. “Play” was once a word that used to be associated with games such as Hide and Seek and Tag. It is now widely used to represent sedentary activities. To quote a fourth-grader in San Diego, “I like to play indoors ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are”, (Last Child in the Woods). The Wii has brought back the physical nature of play, but still restricts the player to the indoors. As game designers and theorists, we are left with the responsibility of answering the question "Have video games put an end to the era of outdoor play?" As well as "Can a solution be found in the emerging technology that is being used to enhance outdoor play?" A Big Game is defined as any that is played using the city and streets as a game board. Big games, over the last few years, have mostly been part of organized events. The author of “Big Games and Smart Mobs”, written on 17 May 2004 says “Big Games have the potential to get game players out of their seats and into the streets. While current versions require a great deal of preparation and are scheduled events, I can imagine a time in the very near future when a smart mob might self-organize a pickup game of Street Pac-Man on a Friday night.” It is a surprise that in 2009, Big games have not progressed much further. Why have big games not left the realm of art projects and scheduled events? Is it because of the lack of research in the area of Big Game? This workshop will give participants an introduction to Big Games, demonstrate their potential and kick-start them into making one: 1. Introduce participants to the Big Game genre, show examples 2. Collaborative assessment one of the games from the examples, and classification of the interaction occuring in the games into 4 categories, people, objects, city/streets and technology 3. Quick overview of the available open-source tools that could be used. 4. Hands-on activity on how to quickly prototype for a Big Game (Participants choose one from the examples in Step 1) - In the end of the session, they would have paper-prototyped a playable game experience and scoped out the next steps needed to implement it (technological requirements). This will be the main activity. Keywords: Simulating a Quasi-Simulation: A framework for using Multi Agent Simulation Techniques for studying MMORPGs
Salazar Javier The use of computer simulation techniques for the study of social phenomena, or Social Simulation, is a relatively new field (Gibert & Troitzch, 2005). By using Multi Agent Simulation (MAS) techniques, among others, social scientists are able to explore “what if” scenarios of emergent behaviors in complex social systems. However, the Social Simulation method faces many challenges : a) human subjectivity; there is no computer, mathematical model nor software powerful and exhaustive enough to replicate subjective aspects like love, free will, etc; b) pervasive contingency; even if we can simulate the interaction of a great number of variables and environmental factors, a computational simulation will never attain the level of complexity that actual human social phenomena has and c) validation; is it not always easy to extract from the real world the kind of research results needed to validate social simulation models. In the other hand, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) share many characteristics with MAS models. MMORPGs resemble in many ways the social complexities of the real world, they are also coded through a programming language and they are also based on a hardware/software platform … but they feature one thing that MAS models don’t: real human beings participate on them, instead of mere AI based agents. Therefore MMORPGs are quasi-simulations that offer unprecedented opportunities for studying complex social phenomena. Since it is humans and not only AI NPCs who play them, the “human subjectivity” problem can be bypassed. Their “sandbox” nature minimizes the “pervasive contingency” problem. Moreover, the wide arrange of data gathering possibilities they offer (see for example Ducheneaut et al, 2004, Williams et al 2008a) empower researchers to obtain appropriate results for computer model validation purposes. In this sense, Gee (2004) and Burke (2005) call for the need of bridging complex systems simulation techniques with MMORPGs studies, and in this paper I intend to further the discussion of the kind framework that is needed for such enterprise. The importance of this theme for the Game Studies discipline is put into perspective by a relatively recent but landmark event on MMORPG Research : Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), has allowed a group of researchers to collect and analyze virtual world data on a unprecedented scale from the Everquest II MMORPG ( Terranova Blog, 2008). This event triggered the discussion of a necessary conceptual framework for the understanding of the extent a virtual world can simulate the real world. In other words, it is necessary to create a conceptual intervention in order to be able to use data from virtual worlds as a means for understanding the real world. Williams (2008b) posited the “mapping principle” as an initial approach to tackle this issue. On this paper I discuss the implications of the “mapping principle” and argue that the relationship between real worlds and their virtual counterparts can be traced back to Baudrillard’s (1983) seminal conceptions of “hiperreality”. I further elaborate William’s postulates and widen their focus in order to include the “hiperreal” category; proposing an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between the virtual and the real on MMORPGS. As an illustration on how to use this framework, I present a practical example of the usage of a MAS technique for understanding an MMORPG and the “real” social phenomena that happen within them. The example consists on creating a multi agent model of social identity (re)production in the World of Warcraft (WoW) MMORPG, based on Salazar’s (2006) theoretical model on social identity. The computational model reproduces many of WoW’s environment, social processes and migration patterns and it intends to show how can meaningful insights of WoW’s social landscape be extracted. To conclude, the paper gives several pointers on how to use the presented framework as well as the key issues that still need to be addressed and discussed in order to bridge Social Simulation methodologies, MMORPG Studies and virtual world data analysis. Keywords: Demystifying guilds: MMORPG-playing and norms
Verhagen Harko, Johansson Magnus One of the most influential gaming trends today, MassivelyMulti Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG), poses newquestions about the interaction between the players in thegame. Previous work has introduced concepts such ascommunity, commons, and social dilemma to analyzesituations where individual choices may result in sub-optimal global results. We propose to use the concept ofnorms instead.Modelling the players and groups of players in these gamesas normative systems with the possibility to create normsand sanction norm violations, we can analyze the differentkind of norms that may deal with the trade-off betweenindividuals, groups, and society at large.We argue that our model adds complexity where we findearlier concepts lacking some descriptive or overstretchingwhen trying to analyze the balance between individualplayers and the game playing society. Keywords: Clans, guilds, norms, cooperation Game Development: a Teaching Challenge [Abstract]
Divotkey Roman, Karrer Martina, Diephuis Jeremiah Cogaen is a component-based game engine that addresses the issues of diversity and continuity of development interests as part of a game development curriculum. Keywords: Game education, game technology Intellectual Disability and Game Accessibility [Abstract]
Thomas Siobhan Videogames are increasingly recognised as an important “quality of life resource” for people with disabilities [1], as has the need, within game industry accessibility advocacy groups, for guidance and assistance in creating accessible games. The IGDA’s Game Accessibility Special Interest Group, for instance, was formed with the mission of helping “the game community strive towards creating mainstream games that are universally accessible to all, regardless of age, experience and disability” [2]. Creating universally accessible games is a tall order, however. First, accessibility is not on the agenda of many publishers and developers. While attracting a wider audience is very much on the minds of game publishers and developers—e.g. Microsoft’s Halo3 marketing campaign was founded upon a push to move the Halo game series from a “hard core” to mainstream playing audience [3] --many mainstream game creators have not considered the significant role accessibility could play in such expansion. Second, while game consoles such as Nintendo’s Wii have highlighted advantages of games for people with physical impairments, “universal” accessibility requires acknowledging the often overlooked disability groups playing games, i.e. those individuals with visual and auditory impairments. The intent of this paper is to raise awareness, within the field of game studies, of one of the most misunderstood and marginalised disability communities playing games: people with intellectual disabilities (IDs). Intellectual disability can be defined, somewhat simplistically, as mental impairment and low IQ, resulting in, for example: difficulty communicating or socialising; problems with activities like reading, writing and using money; difficulty understanding or controlling emotions or behaviour; and dependence on the support of others. Accessibility is particularly complicated in the case of people with intellectual disabilities, as often, they not only have a complex of cognitive impairments (e.g. autism and dyslexia), but accompanying visual, motor and sensory impairments (e.g. blindness and hearing loss). Consequently, efforts to ensure “access by everyone regardless of disability,” have largely ignored the ID user group. The accessibility needs of ID gamers are often poorly understood, even by game accessibility experts whose expertise is more likely to lie in the fields of sensory or physical disability. The paper first introduces the ID audience. Then, presenting results from a small qualitative study it discusses what characteristics of video games make them an ideal entertainment medium for people with ID. The paper continues by explaining the role video games can play in equality and inclusion for ID game players. It suggests possibilities for integrating ID accessibility throughout the game development process, focusing in particular on strategies for user testing. The paper concludes by calling for further research and dialogue within the field of game studies in both the area of ID accessibility and the wider game accessibility arena. Keywords: Bad Games Panel [Abstracts]
Juul Jesper, Weise Matthew, Begy Jason A video game can be such an utter failure, in terms of basic craft and artistic value, that it is not possible to gain any enjoyment from playing it. Or is it? This panel discusses the possibility of appreciating video games that are otherwise considered "flawed" or "bad". The concepts of paracinema (Sconce) and camp (Sontag) describe ways of appreciating cinema and culture that is otherwise derided as low quality by dominant standard of taste. Using these as starting points, we can begin to understand how also games can be enjoyed or valued precisely because they fail to meet established quality criteria. Paragaming can be seen as the practice of valuing games because they fail to meet game-specific quality criteria like usability, stability, flow, etc. This panel will explore three different aspects of paragaming, touching on the relationship between difficulty and user experience, the way paracinematic language and culture is often appropriated into not only the practice of paragaming, but into game development, and the role of group dynamics in enjoying "bad games". The question of bad games is important to the mission of game studies. By better understanding counter-readings and/or counter-playings of games - the deliberate appropriation of games in ways that are presumed to go against the intentions of the developers - we can better understand the taste cultures that we are already (and perhaps not consciously) immersed in. Keywords: GAME DESIGN, PARACINEMA, PARAGAMING, AUDIENCES, GAME APPRECIATION Placing the blame: Negotiation of gaming performance [Abstract]
Sjoblom Bjorn In team based multiplayer gaming, a player’s chance of succeeding or progressing hinges on the collaborative efforts of the team members, but also on the individual skill of each of the players, who has to be able to fulfil the roles and tasks designated. Whenever team members fail to attain whatever goal they have set for themselves, it is crucial for them to work out and understand what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. In co-located computer gaming, this is, for the most part, done through verbal accounts, where players negotiate about and discuss prior events in order to make sense of what has happened [2]. In these discussions, the players orient to issues such as the rules of the game, their opponents’ behaviour as well as their own skills and gaming competencies. Through a sequential analysis of how these negotiations are structured in the players’ interaction, the meaning of “following the rules of the game” and what is to count as “competent gaming” can be analyzed as the players’ own concerns. Thereby, this paper elucidates the participants’ perspectives of their own affairs and the ways in which the social order of a gaming session is a cooperative achievement of the players present Keywords: negotiation, interaction analysis, ethnomethodology, situated gaming Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games:A Case Study for Critical Play
Flanagan Mary, Lotko Anna This paper explores the boundaries of social issues or‘activist’ games with a case study on a popular gamereleased in 2009 which fosters a critical type of play amongthe audience. We assess the game’s public reception tobetter understand how contradictory play elements led to ananxiety of ambiguity during open play. Borrowing from the“poetics of open work,” we will demonstrate how the mostpowerful play experience in activist games result from anew relationship formed between the audience and theplayer through mechanics, subject position, representation,and content. Keywords: Computer games , Casual games, Values, Politics, SocialIssues, Method handheld games, game design, displayless space, amodal completion [Abstract]
Lin Holin, Sun Chuen-Tsai Online gamers’ playing on private servers has become an important phenomenonin many parts of the world. For most of the popular online MMOGs (Massivelymultiplayer online games), unauthorized private servers operate in parallel toofficial servers. Although lack of reliable statistics on the scale of this ‘informalsector’ of game economy, game providers and authorized local distributors havebeen claiming substantial revenue loss due to private servers. Game industry alsoworks closely with law enforcement authorities to crack down on illegal privateservers and netcafés that provide services or access to them. These privateservers of games are set up and operated by individuals who do not pay licensingfee to the game developer, but use the leaked, stolen, or hacked official sourcecode to run the games in their own servers. The size of private servers varies,with the number of players on each server ranging from a few to severalthousands, or even more. Private servers charge players with lower fees thanofficial servers, sometimes employing a ‘donation system’ to collect voluntarypayment and thus generate revenue. Such underground nature of private serverspartly explained why attention on private game servers has been limited to legaland economic dimensions thus far.In mainstream game culture, the private server players are often seen as eitherthrifty players who chose to save monthly fees of official server, or super-achievers who go after unspeakably fast speed of leveling at the cost of abalanced gaming experience. Also, private game servers are regarded as theillegal substitute for official servers. According to the dominant viewpoint that thegame industry commonly adopts, the role of private servers to public servers islike that of pirate music to the music labels—they are to be blamed for millions ofdollars in lost sales. The number of players who play in private servers can bedirectly translated into loss in profit for the game companies.In this study, we try to explore what motivates players to join private gameservers, why they choose to stay, and their distinctive gaming experiences inprivate servers. Our primary data collection method is in-depth interviews withprivate server players in Taiwan, supplemented by articles and messages relatedto private servers posted on local game bulletin boards and discussion forums. Keywords: Utilizing Displayless Space in Collocated Games
Kauko Jarmo, Arrasvuori Juha Digital games have often been viewed as anti-social. However, this view has been recently changing as social aspects of games are gaining more emphasis. We explore the usage of physical space to enable socially richer game experiences. In particular, we utilize the spatial relationship between portable gaming devices to show multiple views into a shared game world. Similar multi-display systems have been studied in desktop PC environments to address the usability problems caused by gaps and bezels between the displays. In this paper, we demonstrate that this source of problems in utility applications can be a design opportunity in games. We implemented and evaluated two games that are played by two players using touch-screen controlled portable devices on a table. Results of our qualitative study show that the displayless space between the devices can be used to increase challenge, create positive surprises, stimulate imagination, and provoke social interaction in games. We also identified some design pitfalls that may break the illusion of a coherent space. Keywords: handheld games, game design, displayless space, amodal completion World of Warcraft, the Aftermath How game elements transfer into real life perceptions and experiences [Abstract]
Poels Karolien Most research on player experience has focused on in-game experiences. The question remains whether game-related player experiences do only occur while gaming, and, consequently stop when the player turns off the gaming device. Or, do they linger and transfer into real life? This paper proposes and tackles long term post game experiences or experiences that arise after repeatedly and intensively playing a particular game or game genre. Examples are association of real life objects with game elements, sounds or songs heard in real life that trigger lively memories of a game world, or slang typical to the game world that shows up in everyday vocabulary. These long term post game experiences presumably originate from the way people perceive and process their environment. To explain this, we rely on basic human perception theory (Boring, 1930). When processing their environment, people use prior knowledge to recognize objects, words, or sounds. The prior knowledge that is used as a reference point can be shaped by any perceptual stimulation that is repeated frequently and over long periods of time. Consequently, this prior knowledge biases human perception by creating a mental predisposition to perceive a stimulus in a certain way (Boring, 1930; Bruner & Potter, 1964). If we apply this reasoning to digital gaming as one particular kind of perceptual stimulation, we could assume that for habitual players of digital games, real world perceptions, cognitions, and actions will be partly structured by their repeated exposure to the game environment. We expect that long term post game experiences can be established through this process. These post game experiences can relate to all kinds of game stimuli, such as environments, actors and objects as well as sounds and words. We expect the concrete manifestation of these long term post game experiences to depend on the type of game or game genre one is repeatedly engaged in. This means, frequent players of First Person Shooter games will probably experience different things, make other associations, and use other game related slang, compared to habitual players of MMORPGs. To the best of our knowledge, there is not yet any research available that investigates the existence and conditions of these specific kind of post game experiences. Keywords: game experience, perception, MMORPGs, habitual play World and Place – Map and Territory [Abstract]
Neitzel Britta Computer games often operate with the term »world«. Some games, from Super Mario World (Nintendo 1990) to World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment 2004), use the term »world« in their title, others like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks 2006) include at least a world-map. As Aarseth (2008) has shown, these worlds are not comparable in size or content to our »real« world but to theme parks. For reasons of playability they offer a compression of space and experiences. While films and novels compress time by omitting unimportant or boring events, games compress the space. »World« only seems to be the term to connote wholeness. Other games, for example the GTA-series, do not use the term »world« in their title but consider certain cities like Vice City, San Andreas or Liberty City, as the whole gameworld, for which they deliver city maps. The maps represent the whole (game)world. In my paper I will explore how these world- or city maps relate to the places and territories in which the avatar moves. The aim is to describe the interaction between the maps and their territory and the world and the places in this world, respectively. Computer games as well as other digital media combine both manifestations of space. They constantly mediate between world and place. While the avatar moves and acts in the places, the player gains an overview over the world on the map. Keywords: ‘No Light Sabres Allowed’: Role-playing in Star Wars Galaxies [Abstract]
Sveinsdottir Thordis While some MMOGs are worlds in their own right, i.e. where the game world and background story is designed for the particular game, other games may be derived from familiar popular culture narratives and other media forms such as films and literature. The MMOG Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) is an example of this trend and is based on the Star Wars Universe which has featured in 6 blockbuster films, books, video games, and a variety of other mediums. This paper presents findings from an ethnographic research within the roleplaying community of Freetown, which is located on one of the servers of SWG. The paper aims to demonstrate how, in addition to recognised player-typology (e.g. power-gamers, role-players and socialisers) player identity and community is established and maintained through readings and interpretation of the Star Wars narrative. Keywords: Morphology of the tetromino-stacking game: The design evolution of Tetris [Abstract]
Jordan Will This essay presents a focused, comprehensive design study of the tetrominostacking computer puzzle game known as Tetris, tracing the structural history and evolution of the game's subtle yet complex mechanics since its invention in 1985. Although the basic algorithm is quite simple and has remained essentially unchanged throughout its history, the enormous variety of implementations and the longevity of its success across many generations of computing platforms has made the tetromino game a diverse practice of evolutionary game design worthy of historical analysis. Instead of producing a full taxonomy or phylogenetic classification of the genre of computer puzzle games derived from or inspired by Tetris (see eg. Juul 2007), my analysis is intentionally restricted to implementations which recognizably reproduce the original basic algorithm. This approach is comparable to historical analyses of Chess, Go and Mancala which attempt to trace the evolution and distribution of a distinct, identifiable gameplaying practice through various successive iterations while maintaining focus on a canonical form. Keywords: A Process-oriented pedagogy for collaborative game-based learning [Abstract]
Bonanno Philip The use of games in formal education and beyond demands a pedagogical model that guides technology-enhanced learning. Deriving inspiration from Connectionist and Constructionist epistemologies, a process-oriented methodology was developed for analysing and managing collaborative gamebased learning. Categories of interactions and the major factors that influence them during collaborative gaming were identified. Interactions are categorised at the experiential and metacognitive levels along three dimensions (domain, technology/game and community) and across three pedagogical levels (acquisition, participatory and contributory) characterising novice, experienced and expert learners. This process-oriented pedagogical model attempts to captures the complexity existing in collaborative gaming and thus provides a taxonomic tool for learning and training design. Keywords: Wii Gaming for Older Players: From Motivation to Appropriation, and Usability to User Experience [Abstracts]
White Gareth, Harley Dave, Axelrod Lesley, McAllister Graham, Fitzpatrick Geraldine With populations ageing across the developed world attention has recently turned to ways of maintaining a good quality of life for those experiencing an extended old age in those countries particularly those living in supported accommodation. Multiplayer embodied video games have the potential to encourage health and wellbeing, and to improve social connectedness. However the older population (and particularly the old elderly) have not so far been quick to adopt new technologies. There are many factors that might explain this, including personal interests and preferences, ergonomic issues, financial barriers, a tendency in older people to crystalised rather than fluid knowledge that makes learning new interactions more difficult, and lack of suitable training. The Nintendo Wii is emerging as an exception to this, and in particular Wii Sports Bowling has quickly become popular with leagues across the USA and UK with many anecdotal and mainstream media reports of benefits of the game for older players. Benefits from regular exercise and increased social contact could be significant, but there is also anecdotal evidence of some risks associated with playing. In this study we focus on the use of embodied gaming using the Nintendo Wii as part of an Age Concern sheltered housing initiative in Brighton, UK. Using interview with residents and scheme organisers, and examining video footage of game sessions we show the evolution of play over a period of 4 months. During this period we document the rationale behind the scheme organisers' concept and intention, residents' preconceptions about and relationships with technology and play, through to their first contact with the game Wii Sports, regular weekly bowling sessions, and finally culminating in a high-profile, inter-housing scheme competition and conference which were also attended by researchers and local council officials. Keywords: Making Sense of Game Aesthetics [Panel Abstracts]
Canossa Alessandro, Kirkpatrick Graeme, Niedenthal Simon, Poremba Cindy In recent years, game studies scholars have brought an expanded conception of aesthetics to bear in the study of digital games. Far from being limited to speaking about the visual presentation of games and graphic styles (with the negative associations of “eye candy”), game aesthetics has become a perspective that allows us to examine the overarching principles and qualities of the gameplay experience. Our aim is to contribute to a fuller picture of what games can hope to become. Although some of us root our work in a consideration of aesthetics as practiced historically, our perspective draws upon a range of critical and creative practices drawn from cultural theory, art history and fine art practice, visual semiotics, psychology and interaction design, We hope to supplement aesthetics’ traditional strengths in discussing the senses, emotion, pleasure and the aesthetic experience, with arguments that allow us to consider embodied play, tangible interfaces, and creative player activity. Game studies is an emerging discipline that draws upon many scholarly practices, but one thing we share is taking pleasure in play. This panel will accordingly seek to demonstrate the breadth, power and relevance of current approaches to game aesthetics by inviting scholars whose work engages aesthetics to examine a single game of their choice in depth. The games we have chosen for analysis are dot.hack, Flower, Hitman and Okami. Keywords: The hybrid identity of player characters: between Facebook and the Sacred book [Abstract]
Maietti Massimo Much of the contemporary debate on identity – and its fragmentation - has been informed by digital media and by its usage by communities. During the ‘90s, the debate has revolved around the notion of nomadic identities that, disembodied from the physical subject, could roam free in the cyberspace. With the deflation of the media objects that supported such paradigm, including Second Life, a trend towards a more unified, coherent individual has emerged - the Facebook model, as it became known. The Facebook model implies a user even more internally coherent than in real life: his or her identity is shared simultaneously by contacts from different social spheres (work, family, new and old friends) all of whom participate and communicate in the same semiotic space. Other signs of this shift are the declining usage of nicknames, often replaced by the users’ actual names. The leading theory to explain such phenomena is that of the critical mass: as long as few and sparse users are connected to the internet, no one would know the user in real life, and as a consequence his or her name would not carry any information for other people. On the other hand, a nickname represents a hook on which users could attach immediately recognisable meanings and ideas about themselves. However, as the mass of digital media users grows, and many of the user’s acquaintances become part of the same network, one’s name becomes a more efficient solution because it brings in play all the semiosis constructed during the user’s lifetime. Keywords: Gold farming in the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), World of Warcraft. An ethical perspective on a controversial growth market. [Abstract]
Heinemann Stefan World of Warcraft (ActivisionBlizzard, USA), the economically most successful MMORPG and simultaneously most successful digital entertainment product of all, is a good example to illustrate the academic and non-academic points of discourse with a focus on ethics. Many video games are opposed (most recently and forcefully in the Kölner Aufruf gegen Computergewalt - “Cologne appeal against computer violence”) on the grounds that they are potentially addictive, or they are criticised for the violence they portray or accused of dumbing down. In terms of method, these and the counterarguments (positive socialisation effects, learning stimulation, encouraging physical activity (Wii), etc.) share the same primarily empirical functional approach to questions of value in relation to this culture-defining phenomenon of virtual worlds as a form of entertainment. However, given the nature of the questions being raised in this booming online sphere, a primarily normative approach may prove more appropriate. Keywords: Discovering Super Mario Galaxy: A Textual Analysis
Linares Keith Super Mario Galaxy has been almost universally lauded as an enchanting, almost magical game, but what meaning is there to be found within the text? What does the entire experience actually represent and communicate to the player on the whole? With many now wondering what more could possibly be done to advance the classic 3D platformer, this paper aims to examine in depth what transforms Super Mario Galaxy from a collection of rules and code and into something that transcends its immensely competent mechanics, inspiring wonder and excitement in all who experience it through the power of its own discovery. Keywords: Collusion. Mapping the Interplay between Paid and Unpaid Labourers in the Digital Games Industry [Abstract]
Kücklich Julian The basic premise of this paper is the notion that computer game production can be conceptualised as a game played among various players, on a heterogeneous and distributed playing field, and according to rules which are subject to constant changes. The playing field on which digital games production takes place can be regarded as structurally analogous to the gamespace of digital games themselves. Both digital gamespace and digital games production are structured by topological constraints which render some moves possible, and some impossible, and both types of spaces are subject to processes of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. We can thus conceptualise the playing field of digital games production as encompassing both real and virtual spaces. Keywords: Killing Time in Diner Dash: Representation, Gender, and Casual Games [Abstract]
Soderman Braxton In the ongoing debates concerning the emergence of game studies, ludologist approaches often dismiss or marginalize narrative and visual elements of games while privileging games as formal systems of rules and game play mechanics. Indeed, the visual representation of games is frequently gendered—for example, when Espen Aarseth dismisses the visual importance of Lara Croft or when Chris Crawford refers to graphics as “cosmetics.” This discourse inevitably reinscribes stereotypical gender formations where the “hardcore,” abstract, formal, mathematical systems privileged by these approaches to games are masculinized while the “casual,” material, visual content, and non-essential aspects of games are feminized. This gendered distinction seems eerily similar to the recent fears and anxieties expressed by the hardcore gamer community over the rise of casual games which can be linked to a distinctive gendering of the hardcore as masculine and the casual as feminine. Thus, this paper will analyze the hardcore “fetish” (in gaming and in game studies), attempting to expose the gender dynamics that structure and subtend the distinctions between the hardcore and the casual. Keywords: Representation, Gender, Casual Games Negotiating Play: The Process of Rule Construction inProfessional Computer Gaming
Taylor T.L. When discussing how computer games work one oftenencounters the argument that a primary functioncomputation plays in the space is “handling” rules. In thismodel of computer game play the device, be it personalcomputer or console, acts as central (and often final) arbiterof rules, upholding the contract of the game with its playersand seamlessly and equitably enforcing a fixed set of rules.While other “layers” of rules are sometimes introduced tonuance this model, there often remains a core sense that thecomputer is centrally relied upon for the lion’s share ofrule-governance.Yet there are a number of studies that signal this story ofthe division of play labor is not so clearly demarcated. InMikael Jakobsson’s fascinating article on a console gameclub and their competitions for the game Super SmashBrothers he shows how the gamers enact a dynamic set ofrules to facilitate play that go well beyond the formalizedones set by the game itself [3]. This often includes on thespot “tweaks” to facilitate play at a particular event. T.L.Taylor’s work on MMOGs also highlights the complexnegotiation around what counts as appropriate and fair playfor online players and how they often interact with softwareto construct strong norms & rules governing their activitieswell beyond the fixed system the game software provides[7,8]. We might additionally look at the interesting work ofauthors exploring practices around cheating, hacking, androle-play to find waypoints in understanding rulenegotiation in computer game spaces [1,2,4,5,6].This piece picks up on the theme of rules negotiation bylooking at how these processes are handled in theprofessional computer gaming scene. One might think thatthe kinds of negotiations described by the scholars notedabove are a unique subset of play and that the very seriousdomain of pro-play (where large sums of money andprestige are often at stake) would surely represent a spherein which the rules of play bear a more one-to-onecorrespondence with system rules & constraints and arecertainly well-defined in advance of competition. I willargue, however, that rules negotiation is a consistent featureof multiplayer computer gaming. Keywords: rules, professional gaming, negotiation The Achievement Machine: Understanding the Xbox Live Metagame [Abstract]
Jakobsson Mikael Xbox Live Achievements and Gamerscores have become an important part of Xbox 360 gaming and have played an important role in the success of the console. Based on the framework provided by Microsoft, the community has created a rich and intriguing meta-game where the individual games become pieces of a larger whole. ... This paper is based on a year-long study of Xbox Live gamers. The empirical materials are made up of blogs, news sites, forums, podcasts, YouTube clips, participatory observations during Xbox Live gaming sessions, articles and reviews from enthusiast and mainstream press as well as face-to-face interviews. The theoretical foundation for the investigation is a mix of gamestudies, internet studies, sociology of technology and critical media studies. Keywords: gamer culture, socio-technical systems, Xbox Live, Achievements, Gamerscore "Some Assembly Required": Starting and Growing a Game Lab [Abstracts]
Fernandez-Vara Clara, Flanagan Mary, Pearce Celia This panel will present case studies of four different game laboratories, exploring the uses of the lab as a research venue and as part of a game or digital media curriculum. The examples will focus on game labs in Humanities departments, where the use of laboratories as a resource is less common. Keywords: games research, laboratory, Humanities, reference |
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